Chapter 55: What Does It Feel Like to Beat Bolt?

The two of them arrived at the track the very next day.

At that time, however, no one knew what these two individuals would represent in the future.

With the upcoming IAAF World Youth Championships in Athletics in Marrakech just around the corner, a large number of elite track and field athletes had recently gathered here. Right now, Bolt was merely an athlete with poor competitive results; some reports even used phrasing like "a talented youth who fails to blossom into a great adult" to describe him.

The implication was that after winning the World Youth Championships, Bolt had simply become ordinary and mediocre, with nothing much to look forward to.

As for Su Shen, needless to say, barely anyone in the domestic sports circle knew him yet, let alone here.

As luck would have it, one of the coaches in the team happened to be a photography enthusiast who had brought along a brand-new digital camera. In this era, digital cameras were still a relatively novel gadget in China, and ordinary people would not shell out that much money just to buy one for fun.

Consequently, Su Shen asked this coach surnamed Chen to come to the scene and record a short video.

When asked why, the excuse was to make a keepsake; after all, this was the first time in Su Shen's life racing against a foreigner, wasn't it?

After giving it some thought, Ning Debao agreed, but she herself was tied up with communications and registration work for the invitational and warm-up races, leaving her unable to break away, so she could only let Chen Cheng tag along.

Under these circumstances, Su Shen and Bolt stood side by side.

Bolt was now approaching his peak height of 195 centimeters, though he was still very thin. It was only later, under Mills' guidance, that he would rapidly bulk up.

It seemed that even in Jamaica, you could not simply find a top-tier coach whenever you wanted one.

If he hadn't met Mills, goodness knows whether Bolt would have ended up becoming the "Jamaican Zhao Haohuan".

Before 2005, Bolt suffered from all sorts of injuries and was as fragile as glass; nothing could be taken for granted.

A fine steed needs a master to recognize its talent; this notion was particularly crucial in the field of track and field.

Yet, at this moment, Bolt was still dumbfounded.

"Su, you want to run a hundred meters with me?"

Seeing this setup, Bolt was somewhat bewildered, because he specialized in the 200 meters. To be honest, prior to 2007, even Mills had never thought that someone of Bolt's height should train for the 100 meters. According to conventional experience, the 200 meters was Bolt's optimal specialist event.

Particularly since Bolt had never undergone formal training for the 100 meters prior to this, though upon Bolt's insistence to try it just once, Mills had open-mindedly agreed. And the story that followed went without saying; everyone already knew it.

However, before 2007, Bolt had never practiced the 100 meters at all, which meant his 100-meter performance at best barely broke the 11-second mark. It was much like bench-pressing a barbell: no matter how talented you are, if it is genuinely your first time, lifting 80 kilograms is practically impossible. Why? Because you cannot master the balance and the way to exert force; even if you have the physical strength, you cannot unleash it.

Once Bolt began his training, naturally not even ghosts or gods could hold him back, but as long as he had not undergone specialized practice, Su Shen had a hundred percent certainty of defeating him.

"Of course," Su Shen nodded, while inwardly complaining—otherwise, if I raced you in the 200 meters, I wouldn't be able to keep up right now anyway.

I came here to farm a super boss in his youth, Bolt, not to get beaten up.

This was also to build an indescribable confidence for himself—

No matter what, at least he had beaten a Bolt who had already stepped onto the Olympic stage.

"But I don't know how to run the 100 meters," Bolt troubled himself. Su Shen, however, used gentle persuasion, tempting the future legend: "Usain, we are just playing around for fun, it's not an official race."

"After we finish the 100 meters, we can do the 200 meters."

"I just want to know how big the gap is between myself and an Olympian."

Seeing Su Shen's expectant expression, which resembled that of a little fanboy, Bolt nodded and agreed.

He learned that Su Shen was not yet sixteen years old, and that Chinese sprinting was inferior even to Japan on the world stage, so...

He might as well indulge the heartfelt anticipation of this "little oriental fanboy."

Seeing Bolt agree, Su Shen instantly felt "wildly ecstatic." Although it was a bit of a mischievous guilty pleasure, how many sprinting geniuses only ever dared to imagine such a thing in their dreams?

"Then let's go, Usain." Su Shen immediately assumed a crouching start, awaiting the command to begin.

Bolt had no idea why this Oriental guy was suddenly so excited, but communicating with Su Shen was quite comfortable. Moreover, the latter agreed with his views and even provided him with scientific arguments, which gave him even more confidence in his own choices.

You have no idea: when Bolt wanted to change his head coach—and did so precisely because he didn't want to over-train—his parents were the very first to express opposition. Not a single friend or relative around him stood by his side. In a foreign culture that prioritized family units...

That must have been extremely agonizing to endure.

Suddenly seeing someone support him, and do so with sound reasoning and evidence, Bolt naturally felt a natural affinity toward him.

"On your marks."

"Set."

"Go!"

At first, Bolt figured that since this was just an Oriental guy, even though he himself had never practiced the 100 meters, he could manage to cope somehow.

After all, he had competed in the Athens Olympics, even if it was just a preliminary heat.

Yet the moment he started running, he instantly...

Became even more dumbfounded.

Utterly shell-shocked.

From his explosive launch to his acceleration, Su Shen went all-out in a desperate battle. Right from the very first move, Su Shen gave Bolt a start.

His balance adjustment was exceptionally brilliant.

The coordination of the three joints—hips, knees, and ankles—looked nearly perfect, staying right along the midline without ever scattering.

Generally speaking, the more explosive a start was, the harder it was to maintain that midline across those three joints.

Yet Su Shen managed to balance both, and this aspect alone made even Bolt envious.

According to Bolt's own autobiography, the single biggest headache he faced was his start.

The transition phase was fine, but the start was the main issue; his excessive height made it impossible for him to explode outward instantly like other athletes.

That was why every time you watched Bolt's starting moment, it always looked "unremarkable"—even though his transitional phase was actually exceptionally brilliant, it was precisely this start that became an irreversible fatal flaw.

Su Shen knew that the vast majority of sprinters in the world fell into two categories: stride frequency and stride length. As for someone capable of balancing both and mastering them simultaneously—only Bolt fit that description.

You must understand that Bolt's transitional phase, aside from Su Shen, was historically the fastest split time!

The first 60 meters in 6.31 seconds—Su Shen's previous historical best.

As for the latter half of the race, needless to say, it left the historical second place trailing by a Pacific Ocean's distance.

So never listen to people echoing mindless rumors claiming Bolt had a poor transitional phase; the data was right there. Before Su Shen clocked 6.29 seconds in the 60 meters, Bolt held the split-time historical record.

Just ask yourself: could a transitional phase that was once historically the first ever possibly be considered not good enough?

Bolt was the only man who could perfectly utilize both stride frequency and stride length.

Well.

Except for...

The start.

Remember this: a fast transitional phase does not mean a powerful start. If you cannot distinguish between the two, you are merely talking nonsense.

And the start was precisely Su Shen's advantage.

If he failed to pull away from Bolt in this aspect, he would truly be in deep trouble.

Even in their future official showdowns, he would certainly need to establish an advantage in the early phase of the race. But Su Shen's explosive burst right now was so overwhelming that it left Bolt dumbfounded...

He asked himself honestly: even in Jamaica, he had rarely seen any young athlete with such a terrifying explosive start.

If forced to make a comparison, perhaps only the founder of explosive starts, his predecessor Asafa Powell, was like this.

Who on earth could have imagined that a randomly encountered "Oriental fanboy" would give him the feeling of Asafa Powell right from the start.

This was simply unbelievable.

Was this kid lying to me?

Could he actually be some sort of genius prodigy?

Yet after a brief thought, he knew that was impossible, because Bolt had never heard of anyone like that coming from China, and even Japan didn't run like this.

"Keep it up, Tian!" Zhou Bing shouted from the side, cheering him on.

Bolt launched a rapid pursuit. Although he had never practiced the 100-meter event specifically, he was, after all, a professional Olympic-level athlete; running it still posed no problem, and the 200 meters was also an anaerobic track and field event.

Entering the stride phase, Su Shen rapidly adjusted, preparing to push his body's speed to the maximum.

Around the 50-plus-meter mark, Su Shen burst forth with all his might.

Under the grueling drills of the "Six-Second Law," Su Shen's body was growing increasingly adapted to it, and his acceleration instantly reached its limit.

This guy... is so fast.

Seeing Su Shen's start, Bolt instantly judged that he was an early-phase runner.

Such a runner might be fierce in the beginning, but their period of decline would also arrive very early.

His own advantage lay in the latter half of the race, and he could find an opportunity to catch up shortly.

That was what he thought, but when he saw Su Shen hit the six-second window, erupting into high speed once more and driving his body to its absolute limit...

Bolt knew he had no chance of catching up in this race.

You have to realize that even in Jamaica, this wasn't their era yet.

In fact, before Bolt ushered in the Jamaican era, the United States across the ocean was the absolute hegemon of track and field events.

Having dominated the rankings since 1896, the USA was the absolute boss in track and field events under 400 meters.

Right up until 2007, the United States remained the undisputed overlord.

Consequently, at this point in time, Jamaica still lacked many perfected theoretical and scientific knowledge bases. If not for the fact that Mills was a rare "scientific research-oriented head coach," goodness knew whether Jamaica could have risen to prominence after 2008.

As things stood, it was entirely normal that Bolt didn't even understand what the "Six-Second Law" was.

Aside from the United States, very few people across the entire world had truly researched and understood it thoroughly at this time.

Seeing this posture, Su Shen had undoubtedly won, but Zhou Bing noticed that Su Shen showed no signs of slowing down whatsoever; instead, he continued sprinting at full throttle.

Why?

Soon, he would learn the answer.

The tall, thin Black athlete behind him entered the latter half of the race, his entire body's speed fully unleashed, as if a "teleportation" sequence had occurred.

He was visibly narrowing the gap between himself and Su Shen at a rapid pace.

However, because Su Shen had accumulated too much of an advantage in the early stages, no matter how fast Bolt ran now, he could no longer catch up.

When both crossed the starting line and glanced at the handheld stopwatch:

Su Shen clocked 10.35 seconds, and Bolt clocked 10.75 seconds.

In other words, factoring in the standard 0.2 to 0.3 seconds to convert it to electronic timing, Su Shen now possessed the strength to break or approach the 10.60-second mark. This left Zhou Bing staring in utter astonishment, and that tall guy... didn't he say he hadn't practiced the 100 meters?

He ran under 11 seconds on his very first attempt?

This was truly hard for them, sports school students who had trained bitterly for years, to accept in their hearts.

"Su, you're so fast." Bolt didn't feel too strongly about it; he merely thought Su Shen was more formidable than he had imagined.

Yet that was the extent of it.

After all, Jamaica still had plenty of talented people, and this result wouldn't shock him too much.

However, this showdown inexplicably planted a seed of interest in the 100 meters within his mind...

Previously, Bolt had zero interest in the 100 meters, dedicating himself entirely to the 200 meters.

As for how Su Shen felt after defeating Bolt?

You know those overly long college entrance examination essays? Su Shen felt right then and there that he could write ten of them in one breath.

PS: Begging for recommendation votes~~~~~~ New book season, everyone please come water the sapling ah~~~ Wuwuwu ┭┮﹏┭┮~~~~