Usain Bolt

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I've never been remotely interested, or any good at sports. All through high school, I struggeld with co ordination, listening to and aknowledging the basic rules of team games. In year eleven, I just decided to not bother anymore, and asked if I could not attend PE lessons, so I could focus on the more important GCSE'S such as English and Maths. This is becuase I was so anxous about getting laughed at for being clumsy, and doing something silly.

Post 2012 London Olyimpic's, I wasn't excited at all. My family was talking about how they had bought tickets to go and see hand ball, and I was considering asking whether I could just stay at home. I can remember watching the sprinters preparing for one of the races, and the camera was introducing all of the athletes, and I can remember it focusing on this tall black guy-Usian Bolt-giving cheeky mobile phone gestures to the camera.

He didn't leave to much of an impression on me to begin with, but I can remember my mum laughing and saying "he's a bit of a joker this guy." Then the gun fired, and the athletes were off! To be honest with you, it wasn't inspiration at first sight when Bolt sprinted ahead of his competitors and almost knocked a woman over, but then I heard people in the room start to talk about how tall he was, and describing his speed as incredible. I suppose this made me start to think about him allot more.

Over the period of the Olyimpics, people were talking more and more about him, and his outgoing persona. His talent, and high self confidnece gave him a lot of charisma, in which he captured my imagination. He has made me want ot take up sprinting, but my parents think that 16 years old is a little bit late to become a sprinter, but that isn't going to stop me!

I don't have ambitons to enter the 2016 Olympics, but I've just got such an urge to give it a go, and undertake sprinting as a hobbie. I'm also confident that I could be quite fast. Basically though, this guy has inspired me greatly, and I was just wondering what anyonelse on here thought about him?

You are so lucky, getting to go to the Olympics!

I like Usain Bolt, he comes across as a really nice man. All smiley, happy and a joker.

Why not start running if you want to? It's healthy exercise and you don't need anything except running shoes to start doing it. You might find out you're a marathonner rather than a sprinter though, who knows? Good luck!

16 isn't bad for sprinting at all. I'd say go for it. Me personally, I'd probably make an OK sprinter, but I'm a terrible distance/endurance athlete. But 16 is a great age to start. You can get noticed now in high school, then either sprint in college or get a college scholarship for it if you're good. But college is generally where recruiters for the Olympics go, so yeah. But high school/your age has the infrastructure for track and field sports, so you should pursue this now and not later.

You may wanna start weightlifting too. Sprinters tend to do squats and Olympic lifts a lot, and having the extra power makes you sprint better. Your high school coach may or may not have you lift a lot, but uh, if you start now, you'd probably be able to build up a fair amount of power. The only genetic disadvantage you'd have sprinting is if you have short legs, then shorter strides. A lot of the Chinese Olympic lifters (Lu Xiaojun is an example of this, as I showed in the other thread) started out as sprinters, then moved to weightlifting as they got older, because of shorter legs.

But yeah, go for it.

You might even make a good hurdler if you are long-legged!