Logic-defying Bolt pays price for the sins of those that went before

 THEY rewrote the handicap when legendary race horse Arkle was at his peak, so what are they going to do about Usain Bolt?

SO EASY: Usain Bolt has destroyed the world record 100m three times in just 15 months

It’s hard not to get caught up in the hyperbole that surrounds an athlete who appears to be single-handedly winning back his sport the fan base it had lost after a succession of doping scandals.

But the morning after the night before and sober reflection is required here in Berlin.

It goes with the territory that there will be forever question marks when it comes to the performances of the world’s top sprinters.

Bolt – more pricked than a pin cushion when it comes to drugs testing – will feel rightly aggrieved that he is paying the price for the sins of those who have gone before – Jones, Montgomery, Gatlin, Johnson and others.

However, a chorus of cynics, who grow louder and more disciplined, will always raise a collective eyebrow to such logic-defying performances. It was ever thus and it forever will be.

Too often in this sport have you blinked through disbelieving eyes, only to be brought down to earth a few weeks later by tawdry tales of substances you struggle to spell.

You may love a sport despite its frauds but it's not easy when you feel a fraud yourself.

For example, I've still not re-read my glowing and naïve despatch from the 17th stage of the 2006 Tour de France, a near vertical slog between Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne and Morzine.

I'd thought American cyclist Floyd Landis was defying logic and convention with a ride of sheer guts, grit and determination.

I was wrong, he was just defying the rules and making me look a mug.

NOT BROKEN, BUT SMASHED: Usain Bolt took 0.11 seconds off the time he ran at last year's Olympics to win world gold in Berlin (Getty Images)

For the record I don’t have doubts about Bolt but the startling way he has lowered the world record is worthy of note.

Jim Hines was the first sprinter to dip below ten seconds, running 9.95 secs in 1968.

It took over 23 years to carve less than a tenth from the mark - Carl Lewis clocking 9.86 secs at the 1991 World Championship in Toyko.

Another 17 years passed before Bolt ran 9.72 secs in New York last May, his first world record.

In contrast it's taken just 15 months for Bolt to lower the mark to the improbable 9.58 secs run at the Olympiastadion last night.

And he’s promising more to come.

"I think it will stop at 9.4 but you never know," he said.

Maybe the IAAF’s introduction of the 'one false start and you’re out' rule might have an impact.

As my colleague Steven Downes reported earlier this week, the new regulation takes effect from 2010 but if it had been applied in Berlin, Bolt would have been disqualified in the semi-finals.

Short of attaching lead weights to his spikes, it seems the only way to slow down the boy from Sherwood Content.

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