I wasn’t convinced. Apart from my races with Ricardo, track and field wasn’t something that had interested me before. My dad, Wellesley, was a cricket nut, and so were all my friends. Naturally, it’s all we talked about. Nobody ever conversed about the 100 metres or the long jump at school, although I could see it was a passion among the older people in Trelawny. All the fun I needed came from taking wickets. Running quick was just a handy tool for taking down batsmen, like my height and strength.
And that’s when Mr Nugent got sneaky. The man bribed me with food.
‘Bolt, if you can beat Ricardo in the school sports day race, I’ll give you a box lunch,’ he said, knowing the true way to a boy’s heart was through his stomach.
Wow, s**t had got serious! A box lunch was The Real Deal, it came packed with juicy jerk chicken, roasted sweet potatoes, rice and peas. Suddenly there was an incentive, a prize. The thought of a reward got me all excited, as did the thrill of stepping up in a big championship. I had come alive on the eve of a superstar meet for the first time. The two top stars in Waldensia Primary were going head to head and nothing was going to stop me from winning.
‘Oh, OK, Mr Nugent,’ I said. ‘If that’s how it is …’
Sports day was a big event at Waldensia, which was a typical rural Jamaican primary school. A row of small, single-storey buildings had been set atop a hill in a clearing in the middle of a stretch of tropical forest. Coconut trees and wild bush surrounded the property; the classrooms had roofs made from corrugated tin and their walls were painted in bright colours – pink, blue and yellow. There was a sports field with some goalposts, a cricket pitch and a running track, which was a bumpy stretch of grass, with lanes marked out with black lines that had been scorched into the ground with burning gasoline. At the finishing line was a shack. On the day of the race it looked to me as if the entire school had lined the lanes in support.
My heart was beating fast, my head was telling me that this was an event as big as any Olympic final. But when Mr Nugent shouted Go! something crazy happened. I got up quick and flew down that track, pushed on by the excitement of competing in a championship for the first time. At first I could hear Ricardo behind me. He was breathing hard, but I couldn’t see him out of the corner of my eye and I knew from our street races that was a good sign. As the metres flashed by, I couldn’t even hear him, which was even better news. My longer strides had taken me into a comfortable lead, and over 100 metres I was out of sight. Ricardo was nowhere near me. By the time I’d busted the tape I was miles ahead, it was over. I’d taken my first major race.
Bang! Winning was like an explosion, a rush. Joy, freedom, fun – it hit me all at once. Taking the line first felt great, especially in something as big as a school sports day race, an event that officially made me the fastest kid in Waldensia. For the first time, the buzz of serious competition had forced me to step up. World records and gold medals were a long way off, but my race against Ricardo had been a push towards getting real in track and field. I was a champ, and as I tumbled to the ground at the end of the lanes I knew one thing: being Number One felt pretty good.
***
There’s an old photo at home that makes me laugh whenever I see it. It’s of me as a kid. I’m maybe seven years old, and I’m standing in the street alongside my mom, Jennifer. Even then I was nearly shoulder high against her. I’m looking ‘silk’ in skinny black jeans and a red T-shirt. I’m clutching Mom’s hand tight, leaning in close, and the look on my face says, ‘To get to me you’ve gotta get through her first.’ It’s a happy time, a happy place.
I was a mommy’s boy back then, still am, and the only time I ever cry today is when something makes my mom sad. I hate to see her upset. Me and Pops were close, I love him dearly, but Mom and me had a special bond, probably because I was her only child and she spoilt me rotten.
Home was Coxeath, a small village near Waldensia Primary and Sherwood Content and, man, it was beautiful, a village among the lush trees and wild bush. Not a huge amount of people lived in the area; there was a house or two every few hundred metres and our old home was a simple, single-storey building rented by Dad. The pace of life was slow, real slow. Cars rarely passed through and the road was always empty. The closest thing to a traffic jam in Coxeath took place when a friend waved out in the street.
To give an idea of how remote it was, back in the day they named the whole area Cockpit Country because it was once a defensive stronghold in Jamaica used by Maroons, the runaway West Indian slaves that had settled there during the 1700s. The Maroons used the area as a base and would attack the English forts during colonial times. If their lives hadn’t been so violent, Coxeath and Sherwood Content would have been a pretty blissful place. The weather was always beautiful, the sun was hot, and even if the sky turned slightly grey, it was a tranquil spot. I remember we called the rain ‘liquid sunshine’.
Despite the climate, tourists rarely swung by, and anyone reading a guidebook would see the same thing in their travel directions: ‘Yo, you can only get there by car and the drive is pretty scary. The road winds through some heavy vegetation over a track full of potholes. On one side there’s a fast-flowing river; trees and jungle hangs down from the other and a crazy-assed chicken might run out on you at any time, so watch your step. About 30 minutes along the way is Coxeath, a small village set in the valley …’ It’s worth the effort, though. That place is my paradise.
It won’t come as a surprise to learn that the way I lived when I was young had everything to do with how I came to be an Olympic legend. There was adventure everywhere, even in my own house, and from the minute I could walk I was tearing about the home, because I was the most hyperactive kid ever. Not that anyone would have imagined that happening when I was born because, man, I came out big – nine and a half pounds big. I was such a weight that Pops later told me one of the nurses in the hospital had even made a joke about my bulk when I’d arrived.
‘My, that child looks like he’s been walking around the earth for a long time already,’ she said, holding me up in the air.
If physical size had been the first gift from Him upstairs, then the second was my unstoppable energy. From the minute I arrived, I was fast. I did not stop moving, and after I was able to crawl around as a toddler I just wanted to explore. No sofa was safe, no cupboard was out of reach and the best furniture at home became a climbing frame for me to play on. I wouldn’t sit still; I couldn’t stand in one place for longer than a second. I was always up to something, climbing on everything, and I had way too much enthusiasm for my folks to handle. At one point, probably after I’d banged my head or crashed into a door for the hundredth time, they took me to the doctors to find out what was wrong with me.
‘The boy won’t stop moving,’ cussed Pops. ‘He’s got too much energy! There must be something wrong with him.’
The doc told them that my condition was hyperactivity and there was nothing that could be done; I would grow out of it, he said. But I guess it must have been tough on them at the time, tiring even, and nobody could figure out where I’d got that crazy power from. My mom wasn’t an athlete when she was younger, nor was Pops. Sure, they used to run in school, but not to the standard I would later reach, and the only time I ever saw either one of them sprint was when Mom once chased a fowl down the street after it ran into our kitchen. It had grabbed a fish that was about to be thrown into a pot of dinner. Woah! It was like watching the American 200 and 400 Olympic gold medallist Michael Johnson tearing down the track. Mom chased that bird until it dropped the fish and ran into the woods, fearing for its feathers. I always joked that I’d got my physique from Dad (he’s over six foot tall and stick thin like me), but Mom had given me all the talent I needed.
The pace of life in Trelawny suited Mom and Pops. They were both country people and had no need to live anywhere busy like Kingston, but they worked hard. They weren’t ones for putting their foot* up, not for one second. Take Pops, he was the manager at a local coffee company. A lot of beans were produced in the Windsor area, which was several miles south of Coxeath, and it was his job to make sure they got into all the big Jamaican