Talk is cheap and shooting Bolt without trial is facile

ON ATHLETICS:  Those who set the pace over 100 metres are inevitable targets of suspicion but there are strong reasons to believe the new record holder is refreshingly clean.

MY ACCOUNTANT called up during the week wanting to know more about this story coming out of Jamaica. "It all looks terribly suspicious to me," he said, and there was no arguing with that.

It didn't make too many headlines around the world, and that's mostly down to apathy. But the hideous rise in the crime rate in Jamaica - a country of 2.8 million people with an area one-sixth that of Ireland - is well documented. No wonder Caribbean Cops has become the latest addition to Sky Digital.

So when Hardley Lewin resigned this week as Jamaica's chief of police, his department facing massive charges of corruption, and the island murder rate headed for another record high, the news was hardly earth-shattering. The suspicious part is that Lewin was back in the job 24 hours later. Jamaica has a slightly softer attitude to these matters than most other countries, and a fairly vicious reputation for double dealing.

In 2005, Jamaica topped the world's murder rate with 1,674 killings; this year the country is running a close third to Colombia and South Africa. With over 700 reported killings already this year, and 30 police officers arrested on corruption charges, Jamaica may well be the dodgiest place on the planet.

I was down there myself late last year, along with my accountant, and driving out of the airport at Montego Bay it felt like we had mistakenly landed in Kabul. There were no rules of the road, at least not any that were enforced. Our driver made the 50-mile trip to Negril in an old Toyota Hiace with an open Red Stripe in one hand and a reefer in the other, never once staying the correct side of the white line.

Once inside the fortified compound of the Rondel Village we felt safe enough. Negril was beautiful, but on the only map of the place some parts of town appeared simply as a blank space, which is never a good sign.

The climax of our trip, which until now we have both done our best to deny, was when my accountant was robbed at knifepoint along Negril's white, sandy beach.

"Respect, man," said the thief as he walked off into the night.

We left there thinking we'd never again trust anyone from Jamaica, which is why I could hardly believe it this week when I found myself defending the credibility of Usain Bolt. With the possible exception of those locked up in Guantanamo Bay, no one is more readily convicted without trial these days than the man who breaks the world record for 100 metres.

This started on Monday evening when Newstalk radio called up and asked me to talk about Bolt on their popular sports show Off The Ball. The Newstalk crew are a likeable bunch, and contributing to this show is akin to sporting charity: you'd really rather pass and you get nothing in return but it's hard not to sympathise with a person in need.

In athletics terms they are, however, part of the emerging culture of the sport's dumb - the people who think the only good story in athletics anymore is a drugs story. These are the same people who would not be seen within 100 miles of an athletics meeting from one end of the year to the other, who sometimes seem less informed on the sport than my three-year-old niece and probably still think Ben Johnson's 100 metres at the Seoul Olympics is the greatest thing ever.

Even this newspaper is guilty of the sport's dumb now and again, and if I read one more line about what Dwain Chambers intends doing next I'll be writing to my own editor.

Bolt's 9.72 seconds was fairly unbelievable all right, in the old meaning of the term. I don't know if he's ever taken any illegal drugs or not, but watching his race from New York last Saturday night, the way he launched his 6ft 5in frame out of the starting blocks, quickly broke into his enormous stride and propelled himself down the track like a jet fighter during take-off, there was a strong sense that sprinting had finally made some natural progress.

He described his race as "99 per cent perfect", but at just 21, Bolt still has plenty of room for improvement. He did benefit from a 1.7-metres-per-second tailwind, yet his average speed on Saturday was measured at 23.02 mph - still short of the record average of 23.15 the American Michael Johnson produced during his 200-metre world record of 19.32.

The record peak speed over 100 metres is the 27.07 mph Canada's Donovan Bailey clocked in the closing strides of the 1996 Olympic final in Atlanta.

If Bolt hits this speed we could see a 9.6 fairly soon.

Newstalk, like most others, made a big deal about Bolt coming out of nowhere - somehow living up to his name.

Last Saturday was indeed only his fourth competitive 100 metres, but keen followers of the sport have been aware of Bolt for several years.

In 2002, at age 15, he was the youngest world junior champion, over 200 metres. Two years later he ran a world junior record of 19.93 seconds. In 2005 he was a finalist at the World Championships in Helsinki. In 2006 he improved his best to 19.88. Last year he lowered the 36-year-old Jamaican record of Don Quarrie to 19.75 seconds and took silver at the World Championships in Osaka.

Truth is, there is nothing even remotely suspicious about Bolt's arrival as world-record holder. This time last year I was talking with Ricky Simms, the Donegal native who now runs Pace Sports Management in London - the former business of the late Kim McDonald.

"We have this guy Usain Bolt coming through," Simms told me. "Look out - when he gets going he's going to be a real superstar, exactly what the sport needs."

I did some homework on Bolt at the time and was pleasantly surprised to discover he was being mentored by Jamaica's old-school sprint coach Glen Mills.

A shy, retiring man, Mills has a fairly impeccable record himself in that none of his athletes have ever failed a drugs tests. His two most famous past pupils are Ray Stewart, widely assumed to be one of only three clean athletes in the 100-metre final in Seoul, and Kim Collins of St Kitts, the 2003 world champion, who practically prided himself on his mediocre winning time.

"We know questions are inevitable given the revelations in the sport," Mills admitted this week. "But that doesn't trouble us for two reasons. One, there is a thing called conscience. Two, Usain doesn't even want to take vitamin C. We know he is as clean as a whistle."

Given my first-hand experience in Jamaica, the latest revelations regarding corruption and double dealing, and of course the shameful list of sprinters with a lot more than just vitamin C in their systems, there should be plenty of reason to dismiss Bolt.

Maybe that's why I could sense the Newstalk presenter's scepticism as I defended the world record. Maybe the joke is on me, but somehow I have a good hunch about this one and will run with it for now.