Has anyone tested Usain Bolt to see if he’s actually from this planet? I have my doubts, personally.
Anyone who saw his Olympic performances knows that the boy can run. Fast. There was absolutely no way he was going to lose this one. At the start line he exuded confidence – and this was true confidence, not the usual sprinter bravado/macho bullshit often displayed in the past by lesser sprinters. He truly believed. I predicted 9.62 seconds – and even then I was worried I might have been a bit optimistic when posting such a claim on Facebook, half an hour before the race. His previous record was 9.69, and the most I’ve seen shaved off the record is 0.05 of a second. So what does he do? Get off the blocks, stretch his lead and blow everyone else away in 9.58. That’s 0.11 seconds off. As I said whilst watching it, f*** me!
I’ve followed sprinting from before the Carl Lewis days, when 9.93 (set by Calvin Smith in 1983) was the elusive benchmark. I’ve seen the records tumble over the years by some great sprinters, but Bolt is in a different class. Asafa Powell took the record once or twice but always bottled it on the big stage. Tyson Gay must be feeling like the guy who’s just scored a hat-trick in the World Cup final, only to end up on the losing side. 9.71 for a silver medal? Choker. To see a guy run a 9.5 I thought would be beyond my wildest dreams. And the most amazing thing? He’ll get even faster.
On to football.
I’m gutted. There’s nothing worse than waiting months for the new season and starting off with a defeat. Oh, except for playing badly with it. Which Liverpool did. Away at Spurs was never going to be easy, and I wasn’t confident after last year’s losses to them there, coupled with such a dodgy pre-season. It didn’t help that early on Carragher and Skrtel decided to take each other out with a clash of heads. Torres then decided to play like he was a Spanish waiter, rather than the forward that struck fear into the Premier League for the past two seasons. Oh, I don’t want to talk about it. We were lame.
For the record, I’ll go on here and say that as painful as it is to say, Utd will win the league. Owen and Rooney will get the main goals and they will open up now Ronaldo’s gone. Chelsea will run them close, but with yet another new manager, this may not be their season. Arsenal’s season will depend entirely on keeping their top players fit. City will be sporadic, and may push before fading. Liverpool may well struggle for goals, and I cannot see how our squad can compete with Utd and Chelsea. The players must still be disappointed after such a fantastic season (87 points and only 2 defeats would usually win the league) and wonder what else they have to do. It’s only been one game, but it looks like it might take a while to get firing again. Oh well. You never know what the next 37 matches are going to hold…
I at least had a bit of good news that lifted the depression of the footy – I got another story accepted! I don’t get paid and it’s online not print, but it’s a popular market that I really wanted to break into, an ezine called AlienSkin Magazine. What’s more, it was a Micro Fiction submission – a whole story that had to be exactly – no more, no less than – 150 words. Sounds easy? Well, you don’t have to write much, but to do a complete story and make it match an exact word count is actually difficult…and then it has to be good.
Anyway, it’s called No Consequences and is a dark sci-fi piece that’ll be online October/November. Chuffed. One more for the CV…