Dal­ton Nar­ine

Go­ing where gold has been found in the past has been Us­ain Bolt's best bet.

Bolt's breath­tak­ing Bei­jing break­out per­for­mance in 2008 still re­ver­ber­ates. The Trelawny speed­ster has swept up nuggets in a mod­ern-day gold rush that takes sprint­ing be­yond the pale. The world has caught on, yet no sprint­er has caught up.

Bolt won gold medals in the 200 at every glob­al cham­pi­onships. His vic­to­ry Thurs­day be­stowed him a fourth world ti­tle in the 200 to go with his two Olympic gold medals. In to­tal, he has won 10 world cham­pi­onship gold medals.

For sure, the mul­ti­ple gold medal­list is un­doubt­ed­ly the best news re­ceived by the Caribbean in years.

In 2008, Pablo Mc­Neil, one of the coach­es re­spon­si­ble for Bolt's fame–and for­tune, was sit­ting un­der an ac­k­ee tree in his yard when the phone rang. The track coach could have ig­nored my call, what with a gag­gle of news agen­cies hound­ing him since Bolt ran like hell in Bei­jing.

Yet Mc­Neil un­cra­dled the re­ceiv­er, and so the back sto­ry of his charge's suc­cess be­gan to spill out. It was as if Bolt had un­coiled his lin­gay frame, burst­ing free from shoe-tight start­ing blocks.

Well, that's how the fir­ing of the starter's pis­tol echoed all the way to William Knibb Memo­r­i­al High School in Martha Brae, Trelawny, where, at 15 years old, Bolt had fi­nal­ly fig­ured how to an­gle him­self in­to the blocks, turn the tricky curve by ex­ploit­ing the arms like pis­tons so he could sling­shot his sinewy stilts down the straight­away–the voice of limbs bel­low­ing a shout-out, a pri­mal scream, re­al­ly, to­ward the 200-me­tre fin­ish line.

Hav­ing trained Olympians Don­ald Quar­rie, Ray­mond Stew­art and oth­ers in high school, Ja­maica's coach Glen Mills has pol­ished an­oth­er break­out ath­lete. Mills may be in the spot­light again, but his col­league Mc­Neil will al­ways stand in the shad­ows as the prin­ci­pal in­vestor, the one who for­mu­lat­ed strat­e­gy for Bolt's pro­gres­sion. And that's how the first Bei­jing echo reached Mc­Neil in 2008 –sat­is­fied, yet bristling as ever.

"I'm dis­turbed, up­set at how Bolt was re­moved from high school while I was as­sist­ing with his de­vel­op­ment," said Mc­Neil, who likened the dra­ma of Bolt's re­lo­ca­tion to a kid­nap with­out ran­som.

"Who­ev­er was be­hind it didn't ad­vise me and nev­er called, but I heard they put him up in a house in Kingston."

Bolt had lived with par­ents Welles­ley, an itin­er­ant busi­ness­man, and Jen­nifer, a root­ed Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist; an el­der sis­ter and younger broth­er.

Mc­Neil harked back to an ear­li­er bizarre turn of events when Welles­ley tried to pull Bolt out of Knibb, but Cher­ry Camp­bell, the pres­i­dent of the PTA, stepped in and suc­cess­ful­ly ar­gued in favour of the coach as Bolt's men­tor.

Camp­bell sold co­conut drops to help de­fray Bolt's run­ning ex­pens­es. Like­wise, the French fam­i­ly, su­per­mar­ket own­ers, pro­vid­ed nu­tri­tion, while Clif­ford Wad­dell chipped in with cloth­ing and shoes and Bren­da Jack­son, who man­aged a games room, took the role of a sur­ro­gate moth­er. Bolt called her "mom­mie." It was all a com­mu­ni­ty ef­fort–from Fal­mouth to Trelawny–with­out any of the clan, ex­cept Bolt's whiz coach, be­ing aware of the di­rec­tion the yel­low brick road would take.

Mc­Neil, who passed away in 2011 at 72, ma­tric­u­lat­ed at Pep­per­dine Uni­ver­si­ty in Mal­ibu, Cal­i­for­nia, and kept com­pa­ny with the sport's great names of his day. Af­ter all, he was in the same pool of sprint­ers like Tom­mie Smith, renowned for his black-gloved, fist-in-the-sky protest against racism while stand­ing on win­ners' row (200 me­tres) at the Mex­i­co City Sum­mer Olympics in 1968.

Four years ear­li­er, Mc­Neil had run his first Olympics in Tokyo. One year lat­er, in 1965, he matched com­pa­tri­ot Herb McKin­ley's na­tion­al record in the 200 in San Diego, and again in Bar­ba­dos.

Mc­Neil caught up with Bolt, a bud­ding ath­lete, af­ter he grad­u­at­ed from Walden­cia Pri­ma­ry School. Bolt was 12 years old en­ter­ing William Knibb in 1999, and Mc­Neil, a so­cial sci­ence teacher and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion in­struc­tor, sports un­der his con­trol, al­ready had a sump­tu­ous salu­ta­tion at the ready.

"It was his agili­ty and en­er­gy in phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion that ex­cit­ed me," Mc­Neil said.

"He showed us more turn of foot (old Ja­maican say­ing) than any­one else."

An un­paid coach ("like 95 per cent in the pro­fes­sion in Ja­maica"), Mc­Neil was as­sist­ed by three phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers and a fa­ther-fig­ure, Dwight Ben­nett. Soon, Bolt, inch­ing taller with each birth­day, was mak­ing a rack­et on the track, his train­ing push­ing two to three hours each week­day. The pay­off was grand. He was clock­ing 10.3 sec­onds in 100-me­tre straight-aways, one af­ter the oth­er.

Fast times at Wal­ter Knibb High cer­tain­ly alert­ed the coach but he didn't let on to Bolt that his pupil was a prodi­gy. Then there was a work­out, the 200-me­tre step-down that de­ter­mined whether Bolt could han­dle, say, the 400. The tricky part of the six-set se­ries was that the last one was ex­pect­ed to be run the fastest even as it was es­pe­cial­ly ex­haust­ing. Still, Bolt was up­right at the end.

"I al­lowed him to de­vel­op grad­u­al­ly," said Mc­Neil, re­mem­ber­ing that con­di­tion­ing was his main con­cern.

There was ap­pre­hen­sion in the class­room, too. Bolt was less than stel­lar. It was tu­tor Nor­man Peart who put a hand.

By 2001, Mc­Neil's at­ti­tude to track was more spa­tial than tem­po­ral. Time spent there be­came an odyssey of dis­cov­ery. He stepped up train­ing on the school's un­even track–a grassy path­way that flood­ed dur­ing a down­pour. And he'd take his ath­letes to Bur­wood Beach so they could pump their arms un­der­wa­ter, work­ing against force. He knew he was strug­gling against the tide, though, when he couldn't en­force a strict di­et in an area of grim pover­ty. So, Bolt and team­mates made do with yams, co­coa, ba­nanas, bread­fruit and dumplings.

When Mc­Neil en­list­ed his young charge in for­eign meets, red flags went up at the Ja­maican track and field body. But the up­roar didn't de­ter him from pil­ing up rou­tines on Bolt's loaded reg­i­men. One of the work­outs was apt­ly called the Killer Diller, coach Bud Win­ter's tem­plate at San Jose State Uni­ver­si­ty in Cal­i­for­nia.

Mc­Neil al­so favoured the ap­proach of Los An­ge­les-based coun­try­man Leo Davis, whom he holds in es­teem.

"Davis has cre­den­tials as one of the lead­ing coach­es in the world, though not in his own coun­try," said Mc­Neil of his friend who trained Olympians. "They won 28 gold medals at world-class meets over the years. I liked his style."

The Killer work­out con­sist­ed of six laps of non­stop in­ter­val sprint­ing at 50 me­tres and 60 me­tres. Each would lead Bolt through a jog of 180 me­tres, then cat­a­pult him down the fi­nal leg un­der a spite­ful sun like a ship in space.

"Some peo­ple were call­ing me 'wicked,' but af­ter we prac­tised the Killer Diller he'd ask me, 'what else?'"

That Bolt em­braced a grind that could in­duce the heaves from a nor­mal ath­lete was not be­yond the rar­efied at­mos­phere of his prodi­gious tal­ent. So, Mc­Neil added an­oth­er spe­cial­ty; it re­quired Bolt to sprint 450 me­tres, rest for a few min­utes be­fore tack­ling the 550, and, af­ter un­wind­ing for ten min­utes, run down the 600 like a chee­tah on speed.

Noth­ing came easy, though his de­meanour dis­proved it.

For ex­am­ple, there were pe­ri­ods when Bolt ha­bit­u­al­ly trained on three or four sets of 30-me­tre sprints, as well as 50s and 70s. Af­ter­ward, skip­ping rope on the ball of the foot and main­tain­ing a high knee lift be­came a chore that drained the heart. The ac­tiv­i­ty em­pha­sised ro­ta­tion of the hips, Mc­Neil said, be­cause they're the pow­er plant. From the knees down is just sup­port for the body, Mc­Neil re­mind­ed Bolt.

But even then, with the tank on emp­ty, Bolt was his usu­al clown­ing self.

"He's just a hap­py-go-lucky young­ster," his for­mer coach said.

"He doesn't un­der­stand how fast he is. He was nev­er rude, but I used to get up­set that he didn't val­ue the lev­el of speed he had to deal with. Some af­ter­noons, I'd be look­ing for him at work­out and his friends would tell me he's in town."

Bolt was chas­ing skirts on the sly.

"But once I brought him back, he gave me 101 per cent," Mc­Neil said.

"I take it that he was spo­ken to in no un­cer­tain terms and so he made up his mind to break the 200-me­tre record at the Olympics. What Coach Mills has been do­ing is a con­tin­u­a­tion of where I left, in ad­di­tion to his own method of coach­ing. He added spice."

Reached by phone in Los An­ge­les, Davis, too, wrapped his emo­tions in Bolt's sur­re­al au­ra.

"It is won­der­ful, ex­cit­ing and a plea­sure to see the clean­est win–and the clean­est lean–in years. Of course, his pre­vi­ous men­tor is among the great­est coach­es of all time. That, too, helped."

Flash­ing back sev­en years, Mc­Neil said he men­tored Bolt about "prop­er foot place­ment and body an­gle" so he could set­tle his six-foot-five frame in the blocks.

"What mys­ti­fies the world of sprint­ing," Mc­Neil said, "is how could this tall guy mas­ter the curve? Rolling the hips was the key and pump­ing the arms around the curve meant the left arm had to stroke �faster than the right be­cause the track curves left­ward, and when you ap­proach the straight both arms must be back in rhythm to­geth­er. The more rapid the ac­tion, the faster hip ro­ta­tion will fol­low.

"He had ter­ri­ble arm ac­tion: his shoul­ders were raggedy and his head was thrust­ing back­ward. So every­thing I taught him be­fore coach Mills got him in 2005 was about tech­nique."