Usain Bolt has offered insight into why the 2004 Athens Olympics loss was less impactful than his silver at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka.
In Athens, he didn’t advance past the men’s 200m qualifiers, where only the top four could proceed, finishing fifth and ending his season prematurely. Despite this, he didn’t view it as a critical setback.
However, the 2007 World Championships was different. Bolt, aiming for gold, had to settle for second place in the 200m final. The result served as a stark realization for him.
In a conversation with High Performance, Bolt reflected on his differing reactions to these losses. He mentioned that in 2004, he was young and relatively unfazed by his performance, partly due to an injury that season, which provided a reason for his shortfall. “Then you get to the Olympics and meet all these who have been training all year and being dedicated to their craft. I didn’t even make it out of the first round…that was a little bit of a wake-up call to say that I had a long way to go if I couldn’t make it out of the first round and there were three more rounds, that showed how far behind I was,” Bolt said.
Reflecting on Osaka, he added, “In 2007, it really dawned on me that, ‘Listen, you’re not working hard enough, you need to work even harder.’ It was the World Championships in Osaka and I felt like I was going to do well and I would win and then I came second. I questioned why I did not win since I thought I had really worked hard to be there and I sat down and challenged myself to give 100% to my training.”
Following this realization, Bolt committed to rigorous training and attentive guidance from his coach, Glen Mills. Mills’ mentorship led Bolt to multiple world and Olympic titles, including setting and then breaking world records in the 100m and 200m events at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, and again lowering these times at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.
