Skip to main content

HIS: This Day in History: 1986 – Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter is born in Sherwood Content, Jamaica.

HIS: This Day in History: 1986 – Usain Bolt, Jamaican sprinter is born in Sherwood Content, Jamaica.

Usain St. Leo Bolt, OJ, CD, OLY (born 21 August 1986) is a Jamaican retired sprinter, widely considered to be the greatest sprinter of all time. He is the world record holder of 100 metres, 200 metres and 4 × 100 metres relay.

An eight-time Olympic gold medallist, Bolt is the only sprinter to win Olympic 100 m and 200 m titles at three consecutive Olympics (2008, 2012 and 2016). He also won two 4 × 100 relay gold medals. He gained worldwide fame for his double sprint victory in world record times at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which made him the first person to hold both records since fully automatic time became mandatory.

An eleven-time World Champion, he won consecutive World Championship 100 m, 200 m and 4 × 100 metres relay gold medals from 2009 to 2015, with the exception of a 100 m false start in 2011. He is the most successful male athlete of the World Championships. Bolt is the first athlete to win four World Championship titles in the 200 m and is one of the most successful in the 100 m with three titles.

Bolt improved upon his second 100 m world record of 9.69 with 9.58 seconds in 2009 – the biggest improvement since the start of electronic timing. He has twice broken the 200 metres world record, setting 19.30 in 2008 and 19.19 in 2009. He has helped Jamaica to three 4 × 100 metres relay world records, with the current record being 36.84 seconds set in 2012. Bolt's most successful event is the 200 m, with three Olympic and four World titles. The 2008 Olympics was his international debut over 100 m; he had earlier won numerous 200 m medals (including 2007 World Championship silver) and held the world under-20 and world under-18 records for the event until being surpassed by Erriyon Knighton in 2021.

His achievements as a sprinter have earned him the media nickname "Lightning Bolt", and his awards include the IAAF World Athlete of the Year, Track & Field Athlete of the Year, BBC Overseas Sports Personality of the Year (three times) and Laureus World Sportsman of the Year (four times). Bolt retired after the 2017 World Championships, when he finished third in his last solo 100 m race, opted out of the 200 m, and pulled up injured in the 4×100 m relay final.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

HIS: This Day in History: 537 – The construction of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is completed.

HIS: This Day in History: 537 – The construction of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople is completed. Hagia Sophia, officially known as the Holy Hagia Sophia Grand Mosque and formerly the Church of Hagia Sophia and formerly museum is a Late Antique place of worship in Istanbul, designed by the Greek geometers Isidore of Miletus and Anthemius of Tralles. Built in 537 as the patriarchal cathedral of the imperial capital of Constantinople, it was the largest Christian church of the eastern Roman Empire (the Byzantine Empire) and the Eastern Orthodox Church, except during the Latin Empire from 1204 to 1261, when it became the city's Latin Catholic cathedral. In 1453, after the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire, it was converted into a mosque. In 1935, under the direction of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the secular Republic of Turkey established it as a museum. In 2020, under the direction of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, it re-opened as a mosque.  Built by the eastern Roman emperor J...
Post a Comment
Read more

HIS: The January 15, 1966 Coup.

WAS THE JANUARY 15, 1966 COUP AN IGBO COUP? Some argue that Major Kaduna Nzeogwu's involvement in the January 1966 coup was part of a grand Igbo plan to "dominate" the country. This argument ignores the fact that Nzeogwu was an Igbo only in name. Major Nzeogwu was born in Kaduna, the capital of the Northern Region, to Igbo immigrant parents from Okpanam, present-day Delta State, then in the Mid-West Region of Nigeria as of the time of the coup. His family and military colleagues referred to him as "Kaduna" because of their attachment to the city of Nzeogwu's birth. Kaduna Nzeogwu wore northern mufti when he wasn't in his army uniform and frequently referred to himself as "a northerner." Nzeogwu spoke Hausa, the lingua franca of the Northern Region, like a local. The major's command of the Hausa language was superior and better than his command of the Igbo language. Even though the coup had been largely termed an Igbo coup, it was foiled by ...
Post a Comment
Read more

HIS: This Day in History: 2002 – The Sierra Leone Civil War is declared over.

 HIS: This Day in History: 2002 – The Sierra Leone Civil War is declared over. The Sierra Leone Civil War (1991–2002), or the Sierra Leonean Civil War, was a civil war in Sierra Leone that began on 23 March 1991 when the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), with support from the special forces of Charles Taylor's National Patriotic Front of Liberia (NPFL), intervened in Sierra Leone in an attempt to overthrow the Joseph Momoh government. The resulting civil war lasted 11 years, enveloped the country, and left over 50,000 dead. During the first year of the war, the RUF took control of large swathes of territory in eastern and southern Sierra Leone, which were rich in alluvial diamonds. The government's ineffective response to the RUF, and the disruption in government diamond production, precipitated a military coup d'état in April 1992 by the National Provisional Ruling Council (NPRC). By the end of 1993, the Sierra Leone Army (SLA) had succeeded in pushing the RUF rebels back...
Post a Comment
Read more