Bolt, Usain St. Leo

Bolt, Usain St. Leo,

1986–, Jamaican sprinter. Unusually tall (6 ft 5 in./1.96 m) for his sport, he won the gold medal for the 200-m sprint at the 2002 world junior championships and then broke the junior record he had set at the 2003 world juniors, the 2003 Pan-American juniors, and the 2004 CARIFTA games. Recovering from injury, he did poorly in the 2004 Olympics, but won silver in the 200-m sprint and 4×100-m relay at the 2007 world championships and ran a record 100-m sprint in 2008. At the 2008 Olympics, Bolt won gold in all the events he entered, the 100-m and 200-m sprints and the 4×100-m relay (though the relay medal was forfeited in 2017 due to a teammate's use of a banned stimulant); he repeated this feat at the 2012 and 2016 games. He was the first Olympic athlete to set world records in all these events, and broke his 2008 100-m and 200-m records at the 2009 world championships. At subsequent world championships, he won gold in the 100-m (2013, 2015), 200-m (2011, 2013, 2015), and 4×100-m (2011, 2013, 2015) races as well as a bronze in the 100-m race (2017), giving him a record cumulative total of 11 golds, 2 silvers, and 1 bronze in the world track-and-field championships.