Faster than Lightning: My Autobiography

And then the training started.

Coxeath’s wild bush was like a natural playground. I only had to step out of my front door to find something physical to do. There was always somewhere to play, always somewhere to run and always something to climb. The woods delivered an exercise programme suitable for any wannabe sprinter, with clearings to play in and assault courses made from broken coconut trees. Forget sitting around all day playing computer games like some kids do now; I loved to be outside, chasing around, exploring and running barefoot as fast as I could.

Those forests might have looked wild and crazy to an outsider, but it was a safe place to grow up. There was no crime, and nothing dangerous lurked among the sugar cane. True, there was a local snake called the Jamaican Yellow Boa, and even though it was a harmless intruder, people always freaked out if one slithered into the house. I once heard of some dude attacking one with a machete before throwing the dead body into the street. To make sure the snake was 100 per cent gone, he then flattened it with the wheels of his car and set the corpse on fire. That was pest control, Trelawny-style.

I ran everywhere, and all I wanted to do was chase around and play sports. As I got a bit older, maybe around the age of five or six, I fell in love with cricket and I’d play whenever I was allowed out in the street. Any chance I could get, I’d be batting or bowling with my friends. Mostly we used tennis balls for our games, but if we ever hit a big six into the trees or the nearby cow pen, I’d make a replacement out of rubber bands or some old string. We would then spend hours bowling and spinning our homemade balls through the air. When it came to making wickets I was even more creative – I’d get into the trunk of a banana tree and tear out a big piece of wood. Then I would carve three stumps into the bark and shape the bottom until it was flat. That way it stood up on the ground. If we were desperate, we would even play with a pile of stones or a cut-up box instead of a proper wicket.

It wasn’t all fun, though. There were chores to do for the family, even as a kid and, oh man, did I have to work sometimes! Pops was worried that I wouldn’t pick up the same work ethic that he had when he was little, so once I’d got old enough he would always tell me to do the easier jobs around the house, like the sweeping. Most of the time I was cool with it, but if ever I ran off, he would start complaining.

‘Oh, the boy is lazy,’ said Dad, time after time. ‘He should do some more work around the place.’

As I got older and stronger I was made to do more physical work around the house, and that I hated. We had no pipe water back then, so it became my job to carry buckets from the nearby stream to the family yard, where our supply was stored in four drums. Every week, if Pops was at home, I was ordered to fill them up and that was bad news because each drum held 12 buckets, which meant 48 trips to the river and back. It was tough work, as those buckets were heavy, and I would do anything to get out of carrying them.

Eventually, I figured that I couldn’t be doing 48 trips to fill the drums, it took too long, so instead I would hold two at a time and struggle home with double the weight, despite the extra, painful effort. In my mind I was cutting corners, but carrying two buckets at a time developed me physically: I could feel my arms, back and legs getting bigger with every week. The chores soon built up my muscles, and without ever going to the gym or using weights, I was taking my first steps towards developing some serious muscle. Get this: my laziness was actually making me stronger. Combined with the walking, climbing and running, my dad’s housework was helping me to become a bigger, more powerful person.

The funny thing was that Mom never forced me to do anything I didn’t want to do, especially if Pops wasn’t around. If I really grumbled hard I could cry off from bucket duty and he would never find out. The lectures would only start if ever he came home early from work to catch me slacking off. That’s when he would complain. He moaned that Mom loved me too much, and I suppose that was true, but I was her only child, so our bond was extra special.

Sometimes Dad was too strict, though. He didn’t like me to leave the house, and if he was home and I was playing he would always force me to stay in sight, usually in the yard. But whenever Pops went to work, Mom allowed me to roam free. Still, I wasn’t dumb. Wherever I was, I always listened out for Dad’s motorcycle, which would splutter noisily as the wheels came down the hill and into the village. As soon as I heard his engine, I’d drop whatever it was I was doing and sprint to the house as hard as I could, often getting back before Pops got suspicious.

Sometimes I would sneak away to play at a friend’s house which was on a patch of land away from Dad’s usual journey home. Listening out for his old bike became more difficult then, but I had a trick up my sleeve. When I snuck out of the house I would always take Brownie, the family dog, with me. The moment Pop’s bike came rumbling home, Brownie’s ears would prick up long before anyone else could hear a noise. As soon as that dog made to leave, I knew it was my cue to run. In a way, he was giving me a taste of what life would be like in the future:

Listen for the gun …

Bang!

Pop the blocks! Run! Run!

My first trainer was a dog. Ridiculous.

***

I’m going to explain how it is with my family. I have a younger brother, Sadiki, and an older sister, Christine, but we all have different mums. That’s going to sound weird to a lot of people, but that’s the way it is with home life in Jamaica sometimes. Pops had kids with two other people and my parents weren’t married when I was born. Still, it was never an issue with Mom, and whenever Sadiki and Christine came to stay with us in Coxeath they were welcomed into the home like they were her own kids.

Even as I grew older and got to understand relationships, love, and the idea of marriages, our family situation never freaked me out. Mom and Dad eventually got married when I was 12 years old and the only time I became upset about the day was when I wasn’t allowed to be ‘ring boy’, the equivalent of a best man. I wanted to pass the wedding band over to Dad during the ceremony, to be involved, but that responsibility was given to someone else in the village, probably because I was too young.

It never bothered me that I had a brother and sister with different mums, it just seemed natural. Anyway, our family are more laid back about relationships and friendships. We’re not that uptight, especially in conversation when nobody cares about being a little too personal. I’m so close to my parents that I can talk to them about anything, and these days I know that if I converse with Mom and Pops on the phone, their sex life will sometimes come up, especially if Dad has anything to do with it.

It’s crazy. I could be chatting with him about anything – the weather, or cars maybe – but somehow the talk will come back to what goes on in the bedroom. I remember one time when I was talking to the pair of them on the speaker phone at their house. I started the conversation with, ‘Yo, Pops, what’s up?’ And that’s when the Sex Talk started.

‘Hi, Usain,’ he said. ‘It’s all good. I’m good, your Mom’s good – all we do is fool around now …’

I couldn’t believe it. That was an image I did not want in my head. ‘What?!’ I said. ‘Aaaargh! Mom, make him stop!’

Most of the time I’m cool with it, because I’ve heard that style of chat for years, starting when I was a little kid. Sometimes Dad’s friends would call out of their car window when they drove past on their way to work, usually at six in the morning, shouting out all kinds of cusses and rude words.

The first time I got a sign that not everything in life was perfect was probably when I had my first experience with death. My grandfather, Mom’s dad, passed away at home. He slipped on the wet floor while carrying some firewood through the house and he banged his head as he fell. He was out cold. It happened right in front of me, but I didn’t know what to do as I stared at him, lifeless, lying there unconscious. I felt helpless. I was only nine years old, so I knew nothing about first aid. I panicked and rushed next door for help, but when Mom and the neighbours came around I was told that there was nothing that could be done for him. He’d suffered a heart attack, and because the roads were so bad and Coxeath was so remote, there was no way my folks could have got him to a hospital in time. Granddad died shortly after.

As a kid, death didn’t register with me. I didn’t feel anything, because I didn’t really know what was going on. I could see that everybody was sad when we went to the funeral, that everyone was crying, and Mom and her sisters were in tears, but I didn’t feel the same hurt because of my age. I hated it that my mom was so upset, but I was just too young to really get what death and funerals were about. After the burial, I went off to play with friends.

Religion confused me too, and that was a big deal to us as a family, for Mom especially. She was a Seventh Day Adventist, a Christian, and we would go to church every Saturday, because that’s when she believed the Sabbath took place. Dad wasn’t so keen on it. He’d go with her maybe twice a year at Christmas and on New Year’s Eve, but despite the fact that religion wasn’t really for him, he always respected her beliefs. Mom tried to encourage me as I grew up, but not too hard. She would read me the Bible, to teach me right from wrong, but she never tried to force her beliefs on me, for fear of turning me off.

‘If I pressure people to do things too much, they’ll simply turn against the things I’d like them to do,’ she said one time.

Despite her easy approach, I really didn’t enjoy church as a kid. As I got older and started going to track meets, I was pleased whenever they took place at the weekend because it meant that I wouldn’t have to go to service. Instead, Mom would lead me through devotion in the morning – which meant 20 minutes of activities that basically involved some singing, talking and a few verses from the Bible. In her mind it made up for the fact that I wasn’t going to a church at the weekend.

That routine stuck with me, and I turned to religion more and more as I got older, mainly because I came to realise that I’d been given a serious gift. The one thing I began to see was that God always helped people who helped themselves. So whenever I was on a start line and I knew I’d done the work my coach had set me in training, I grabbed the crucifix around my neck, looked up to the sky and asked Him for enough strength to do my best.

After that little chat, it was down to me.

***

A killer athlete can’t just roll up to the start line in any meet and expect to win without working hard. They can’t hope to take gold medals or break world records without discipline. And boy, there was some hard work and discipline in the Bolt home – serious discipline.

My dad was a caring parent, he loved me very much and did everything he could for me when I was little. But he was also the man of the house, a strict, traditional father, and he believed in manners and respect at all times. I wasn’t a bad kid, but if ever I stepped out of line, Pops would always punish me with a lecture. If ever I stepped out of line really bad, though, he would bring out the whoop-ass on me. He would hit me, because he was old school and that was the way he had been brought up by his own dad. Those beatings were always something to be afraid of.

These days I guess roughhouse treatment towards a kid might sound bad to some people, but that’s what happened when children messed around and got into trouble in Jamaica. I was no different and my ass was whooped for all kinds of things, so much so that I always sensed when a hiding was coming. If ever I got hauled in front of Dad, I knew within the first few seconds if I should steady myself for a beating.

If he was visibly angry then I knew my backside was fine, because he preferred a discussion. Spanking was always a last resort and given the choice he would talk and talk and talk, and when he talked, he talked a lot. But if Pops was calm and quiet, that meant I was going to get my ass whooped. When I was naughty in the house, the beating would be with the belt. If I was fooling around outside he would catch me with the hand, and boy, did that hurt. Whack! Whack! Each blow would sting like hell and the tears would come down afterwards, but I don’t resent the spankings at all. They taught me the difference between right and wrong and made me the man that I am today.

See, here’s the thing about my dad: respect was something he would never play around with. Good manners were important to him and he wanted me to grow up with the same values, so I was raised to be a polite and good-natured person. He led by example, too. Dad was always polite to everybody and he expected people to treat him the same way. If ever somebody was rude around him, he wouldn’t stand for it. No matter who a person was in Sherwood Content, or what they did, or how bad or rough they thought they were, if they came around our house without respect, Dad would show them the door.

At the time, I hated his constant need for politeness. I remember the one thing he put on me when I started at Waldensia School, around the age of five or six, was that I had to say ‘Good morning’ to all the folks I passed in the village as I walked to school. And I mean everybody, no matter who they were, or what they were doing at the time. It was ridiculous. I would say ‘Good morning’ to about 20 different people along the way. I must have looked like a crazy person, what with all the ‘Morning, morning, mornings’ as I strolled down the street.

Most of the time, everybody smiled back, but there was this one old lady who would stand at her gate, a real battle-axe, and every day I’d come up the hill and catch her eye. Remembering what Pops had told me, I always nodded and said, ‘Good morning’, but she never used to smile or reply. Not once. She just glared. At first I didn’t let it get to me. I said hello to her daily, knowing that she would ignore me, but then one time I lost my patience.

‘To hell with this!’ I thought. ‘Why should I say “Good morning” to her if she’s going to be rude and ignore me?’

I approached her house as usual and when I saw her there, staring, I just walked on past. There was no nod, there wasn’t a polite call of ‘Good morning’. Instead, I carried on up the track without a word. I didn’t think any more of it, but I should have known better because it was Jamaica and rudeness in kids was always frowned upon. When I got home that afternoon I couldn’t believe my eyes: there she was in the front room and that lady looked seriously pissed. She glared at me hard. Her arms were folded and she was tapping away with her foot. The only thing missing was a rolling pin to hit me with. And then Dad grabbed me by the shirt.

‘Bolt,’ he said calmly, quietly, a sure sign that I was in some serious trouble, ‘Didn’t I tell you to say “Good morning” to everybody you passed on the street, no matter what?’

‘But Dad,’ I said. ‘I’ve been saying “Good morning” to this lady every day and she never …’

‘No matter what!’ he said again.

I was so angry with that old woman. I knew she had brought me a whole world of whoop-ass, but it was a valuable lesson for a boy growing up. As the smacks rained down on my backside, they made me appreciate the importance of manners and respect even more. And I never ignored anybody ever again. Man, I wouldn’t have dared.

* In patois or English creole we use the word ‘foot’ to describe any part of the leg – the thigh, the feet, the calves; to put your foot up is to put your feet up. Other phrases are ‘bad’, which often means good, and ‘silk’, which means stylish.

† Come on man, get serious – I buy a new one. Don’t be so ridiculous.

I arrived in my khaki uniform at Waldensia Primary and friendships happened quickly. I had energy and good manners, so I got on with most people, but I really liked the kids who enjoyed cricket and I’d hit it off with anyone who had a bat and a ball. I became friends with a kid called Nugent Walker Junior, because he was as excited as I was by watching the likes of Courtney Walsh and Brian Lara on the TV, and we hung out most days, smashing sixes around the school field.

Nugent lived down the way from me and he would be waiting for me outside his house as I walked to school. We became inseparable. Almost straightaway he was nicknamed ‘NJ’ by friends, which made sense – it came from his initials after all. But after we’d been hanging out for a while, everyone at school called me ‘VJ’. I had no idea where it came from, but I really didn’t mind the tag because I’d taken to hating my name. Nobody could say it right and I was called ‘Oosain’, ‘Oh-sain’ or ‘Uh-sain’ whenever I met someone for the first time. Some kids referred to me as ‘Insane’, which gave the impression I was bad or tough. But it was only when girls started saying my name at high school that I finally got into it.

‘Yooo-sain! Yooo-sain!’ they cooed.

‘Oh, I see,’ I thought when I heard it for the first time. ‘Usain sounds kinda nice whenever a girl calls for me from across the street.’

At school I was pretty good in class, especially math, and when lessons began I made an important discovery: man, I loved to compete! As soon as a problem went up on the chalk board, I’d race to finish. Often NJ would battle me to see who could complete the sums first, and that’s when a killer instinct showed up. Everything I got involved in, I did it to win. I had to win. First was everything, second only meant losing. And I really hated losing.

I cruised through my first few years at school, and sports quickly became my thing. Thanks to all that running around the wild bush in Coxeath I was fast. In cricket when I bowled I could come down on the wicket hard, with speed, and I was quick in the field. My physical size gave me an advantage over the other pupils because I was growing into a tall kid, and at the age of eight I was taking wickets off cricketers a lot older than me, guys that were 10 or 11 years old. I was already the same height as them and it wasn’t long before I’d opened the batting for Waldensia a couple of years earlier than most kids even made the team.

I was pretty good at sprinting, too. I had potential. I was quick on my feet and after I’d beaten Ricardo in the Waldensia sports day, I entered my first serious inter-schools race (where the prize was made out of tin and plastic rather than rice and peas), winning all my events. After a few more competitions in 1997, it was obvious to everyone that I was the fastest kid in Sherwood Content, and I later won the Trelawny parish champs when I was 10. People were taking notice of what I could do and I was winning school race after school race. Our house creaked at the fittings with all the plastic trophies and medals I was bringing back for winning this championship and that, but none of it was really serious to me. I just enjoyed running for fun. I loved the sensation of coming first in school races, of beating the other kids, but there was no way I could have seen that track and field was a serious future for me at that time. How could I? I was just a kid.

It was opening doors, though. After a couple of years competing at school level and winning parish meets with Waldensia, I was invited to race the 100 and 150 metres events in the National School Championships. I got my ass whooped in both, but because I was clearly one of the fastest in the north-west of Jamaica of my age, I was invited to be a sports scholarship student at William Knibb High School, which was a short car ride away from home, near Falmouth, where a lot of the big cruise ships dropped off their tourists.

William Knibb was a great place, a nice school with a fantastic sporting history. One of their former students, Michael Green, had competed in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta, where he’d finished seventh place in the 100 metres. They also had a strong reputation for cricket, but it was my racing ability that made me eligible for a spot in one of their classes.

Here’s why: in Jamaican high schools, track and field was huge. The passion for athletics was as big as it is for football in English schools, or the US colleges’ love for American football and basketball. The way the system worked – from youth talent through to pro level – was that a kid first competed at local meets. If they got hot and won a few big inter-schools races at junior level, as I had at Waldensia, then they got to race in the parish, or state champs, where the standard went up a little. Get to high school and make some noises in the bigger meets and an athlete soon found himself competing at secondary school national level. That was where life got interesting. A kid with serious game in his mid-teens could draw flattering attention from American colleges, who usually offered sports scholarships. Pro contracts and big dollars followed soon after.

I was on the bottom rung of that ladder, but William Knibb could tell that I carried the potential to compete in some of the bigger meets in the coming years. One of those was the Inter-Secondary Schools Boys and Girls Championships, or ‘Champs’ as everyone called it back home. To anyone outside the island, the event sounded like a super-sized sports day, but Champs was the biggest deal for any junior athlete in Jamaica and a national obsession. In fact, it was probably the biggest school event in the Caribbean.

Champs was – and is – the heartbeat of Jamaican track and field success. It was first set up in 1910 to pitch the best athletic kids in the country against one another, and every year in March over 2,000 children would battle it out. The best schools were crowned ‘King’ or ‘Queen’, and the event was always screened on TV. Hell, it even took over the front pages of our national newspapers. A lot of countries all over the world were having difficulties when it came to financing their junior athletic meets, but Champs was such a big deal that a number of serious sponsorship contracts paid for its organisation every year.

I could understand the appeal. The four-day meet was usually held at the National Stadium in Kingston and the 30,000 tickets for each day sold out fast. The demand was huge because people wanted to see the next generation of national superstars, and when those tickets had gone loads of people jumped over the fence to get in, which meant the bleachers were always jammed. People would dance in the crowd, there were horns blaring, school bands played noisily in the seats. If anybody wanted to pee they were screwed, because it would take an hour to get to the bathroom.

On the flip side, Champs provided a hunting ground for Jamaica’s government-funded coaches. In 1980, our old Prime Minister Michael Manley established the GC Foster College – an educational facility working entirely in physical education and sports coaching. It’s one of the reasons why, with a population of 2.7 million people, Jamaica developed as many gold medallists as a lot of the world’s bigger countries. GC Foster College produced the coaches; the coaches scouted the best junior athletes at Champs, then they turned them into title-winning pros.

Understandably, head teachers from across the country were always looking out for new athletic talents to add to their Champs alumni. Schools got a lot of props for producing successful track and field competitors, and William Knibb’s principal, Margaret Lee, was a teacher with sporting smarts. After she had got wind of some of my race times, Miss Lee told me that the school would pay a chunk of my tuition fees as part of a sports scholarship. They had spotted my athletic potential. A subsidised education seemed a fair trade for my track and field talent in 1997, especially if I stepped up and made it all the way to Champs a few years down the line.