A much anticipated weekend beckons. After a sensational and controversy-laden, with mostly China at the receiving end of the latter, the London Olympic Games 2012 enters its second week Saturday. Some events like women’s heptathlon already commenced Friday but dubbed as the ‘Super Saturday’, Aug. 4, the big-ticket, high-interest athletics events get underway in real earnest.
As many as 21 gold medals are up for grabs on just one day! And with marathon and triathlon on the programme, the streets of an already much overcrowded London – with its surface and underground systems already inundated to the point of choking and the main Stratford area already the stomping ground of a cosmopolitan multitude – are likely to draw an even greater multitude.
In one of the few truly multi-sport nations, the public interest in the Games and its ownership already knows no fathom. Great Britain may no longer be as great as it once was, yet the nationalistic pride at the Games knows no bounds. There is all-pervasive obsession with the Games and it is quite overwhelming whenever, wherever one steps on to the London streets – nowhere more so than Stratford, the now transformed East End part of the great city.
The BBC, the television channel with exclusive broadcasting rights, is wearing its national colours on its sleeves, with its commentators going berserk at the slightest hint of glory. And the Brits are lapping up its overly lopsided coverage of everything involving Team GB and its quest to improve on its 47 medals and fourth position at Beijing.
To the extent, the signal achievement of that great swimming phenomenon and Olympic legend, Michael Phelps of eclipsing the previous record for most medals at best got perfunctory treatment.
Yet midway through the first week and still languishing around 20 on the sweepstakes with China soaring and the USA playing catch up, hurt deep. But a slew of golds, as many as four of them in a mere 24 hours sent Team GB soaring to fourth on the medals table, soothing the anxiety of a frenzied nation. And always the ones to know when to bask in reflected glory, the politicians were head over heels in rejoicing the triumph of its rowers and cyclists.
The enthusiasm for GB hogging more medals and more glory is not going to wane around these parts, but on Saturday the focus shall inevitably shift to the track and field. And no event in athletics is bigger than the 100 metre sprint – its winner winning the sobriquet of the Fastest Man on Earth.
Quite predictably, under the spotlight now are the inimitable Jamaican Usain Bolt, his compatriot Yohan Blake and the pretender USA’s Tyson Gay – the 29-year old making a comeback from injuries, but one who is already clocked behind Bolt the second fastest time, the sub 9.7 second run.
Bolt was all panache at Beijing – winning at a canter in world record time, glancing back to see his competition back in the ‘distance’, waving to the crowd and thumping his chest. He set three astounding world records at Beijing, and what is all the more remarkable broke them within a year’s time at the World Championships.
At 26, Bolt this season is nowhere close to such formidable form. Injuries, the greatest bane of an athlete, to back and hamstring that he downplays have taken their toll. Blake beat him in both the 100 and 200 metres at the Jamaican trials, and he absented himself from a preparatory event immediately before the Olympics. That said, the Olympics are likely to ignite a fire in Bolt’s belly. And if he touches his prime, the big stage performer that he is, he might shave a second or two from 9.58 second world record.
Lamine Diack, the IAAF president only earlier this week told reporters here: “With Bolt anything is possible… If he is in shape possibly we will see 9.40-something in the 100m.”
From the looks of it, the likelihood of this Bolt striking here again in spectacular fashion is so very high. Try stopping one from getting a vantage point to watch this one, from heats to the medal run.
