Stories of the Olympic Games: 100 Metres Faster, Higher, Stronger

-Wells has got it!

-Marvellous!

I cannot believe that Thorpe's done that!

A fantastic run by Coe! He's done it. He's got the gold!

The 100 metres Olympic final - the big one, the must-see event.

Thousands in stadiums, millions on television,

wait for the fastest men in the world to begin their race.

Spectators, athletes, everybody is on edge.

STARTING GUN FIRES

-COMMENTATOR:

-Away they go...

Here, there is only ten seconds to gain sporting immortality.

Barely the time it takes to hear these words.

The fastest man in the whole world, you're number one,

nobody else is better, that's the most prestigious title

that any human being could ever dream of or accomplish.

The race looks so simple.

But at every phase of a 100 metre Olympic final,

there is a challenge to winning gold, from start to finish.

You'd better be 100% effective

and be the best you can at every phase of that race.

STARTING GUN FIRES

First when the starting gun fires,

then sprinting at speeds of up to 28mph.

At this stage, the energy cost is greater

than in any other athletic event.

Ending with the drama of the finishing line.

I crossed the line and I looked over at the clock.

I didn't know about the world record.

-COMMENTATOR:

-9.84 is a new world record!

This film examines each stage of the 100 metres final

to reveal how the race has been run faster and faster.

It tells a 100-year story made with fractions of seconds,

and how the greatest sprinters have won gold

and made this explosive burst of speed

the most electrifying spectacle in any sport.

That is superb! It's a new world record!

-COMMENTATOR:

-The Olympic 100 metre final.

It's show time and lining up for the 100 metre final

are the big beasts of the Olympic track.

These athletes are focused on getting the right start,

mentally preparing in the few seconds they have

before the race explodes into life.

All the names have been mentioned and it's quiet.

And people in the stand are quiet. And you can hear a pin drop.

The starter says, "On your marks."

Get to your marks.

That is the most nerve-racking time that I felt.

From the very beginning,

the way the 100 metre was started has its own history.

The first Olympic 100 metre took place at the inaugural modern Games of 1896, in Athens.

For the final, there were as many ways to start as there were runners.

In lane four was 21-year-old student Tom Burke, from Boston University.

At the Athens final,

Burke did something that changed forever how the race would begin.

He switched from a standing to a crouching start.

Tom Burke used the crouch start in 1896.

If one looks at the rest of the guys in the race,

you see they're using variations of a standing start.

One guy is using, as I remember it, a couple of pegs.

The crouching start allows science to help,

propelling the runners forward faster.

You want to project yourself at a unique angle

as fast as possible, as explosively as possible.

So being coiled up would allow you

to apply more force in a shorter period of time

than if you're just standing upright.

The revolutionary new start won Burke the race

in a time of 12 seconds.

Another early innovation also helped sprinters

get the right start to the race.

In the early Olympics, there were no starting blocks.

So athletes would dig their own holes in the cinder tracks

to allow secure footing.

You needed something firm to drive against.

So sprinters took trowels to the start of the race and dug a nice hole

and they could drive out nicely and they wouldn't slip.

The right start also demands

that 100 metre athletes react with skill to the starting gun.

-STARTER:

-Set!

Your reaction time needs to be as quick as possible.

You have to react to the gun.

You can't listen for the gun and then go.

-Bang!

-STARTING GUN FIRES

The secret is to have just the right instinctive response to the gun.

So a quick reaction immediately gives you the edge

that turns centimetres into metres of advantage.

If you are shocked by the gun,

you're going to react sooner, quicker, more reflexively

than if you're trying to listen for the gun.

STARTING GUN FIRES

So it's like if you're walking down the street and a bus backfires,

you react.

But good reaction times can be taught.

British sprinter Harold Abrahams, of Chariots Of Fire fame,

trained with his coach, Sam Mussabini,

to master the challenge of the gun.

There's a wonderful picture of Sam using the gun

that was going to be used in competition, just behind Harold

as he blasts from the blocks with a puff smoke.

Rehearsing it and rehearsing it and rehearsing it.

They also trained for the right finish.

And at the finish, where he would rehearse

dipping to the finish over and over again.

Abrahams was part of a generation of athletes

more rigorous in their approach to the race than earlier amateurs.

And this helped Abrahams and others to run the race faster.

In the run-up to the 1924 Olympics in Paris, some things worked,

others were discarded.

His cross-arm action was ludicrous, which he has Abrahams doing.

But when you see the 1924 Olympics film,

Abrahams runs with a linear action, which is what you should do.

So Abrahams seemed to have ignored most of what was shown in the film, I'm afraid!

Paris provided the opportunity for Abrahams

to apply this more professional approach

to an Olympic 100 metre final.

He reacted perfectly to the gun.

And then crossed the line with a finish of equally practised precision.

Abrahams won gold in an Olympic-record time of 10.6 seconds.

They were no longer now just sprinters

going over the starting line to run as fast as they could.

They were athletes who had prepared, who had thought about it

and who had rehearsed it.

It was, in a sense, a new beginning for the 100 metres.

After the tense wait for the gun comes release...

out of the blocks.

But immediately, there is another challenge for the 100 metre finalist.

There is now barely three seconds to complete

the 30 metres of what is known as the drive stage of the race.

It's the most advantageous part of the race,

where you can really gain an advantage for yourself.

Not necessarily... We're not talking about other competitors, but for yourself.

The first stride, the second stride,

the third stride are so important

to get the right momentum,

to get the right foot placement and to get the right drive.

Coming out of the blocks too high or too low

can cost vital thousandths of seconds.

The ideal situation is when your body

is at the angle coming out of the blocks

and you're at a 45-degree angle.

Now you're able with every step

to put force back into the track that propels you forward.

The great sprinter calculates his angles perfectly

and speeds to full velocity with athletic grace.

Such a runner was the American star of the 1936 Olympics,

Jesse Owens.

Jesse Owens was just simply beautiful to watch.

He flowed over the ground majestically.

He was running on cinders, of course.

You could hear the sound when he ran -

tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick...

It was regal. Just a regal bearing, the way he ran.

Owens showed that the 100 metres could be raced

with elegant economy and flawless technique.

When you look at Jesse Owens running,

he was a very, very efficient sprinter.

Very upright in his style.

It's very fluid and very efficient,

because there isn't any wasted motion.

Owens had sporting genius,

yet faced barriers as a black athlete to expressing it.

To help nurture a new generation of US medal winners,

sports scholarships had begun to be awarded.

But these went to white athletes

and were denied to "runners of colour".

Even Jesse Owens didn't have a scholarship.

He was the greatest athlete in the world.

He didn't have a scholarship. He wasn't allowed to sleep on campus.

He had to keep himself going by working in a petrol station.

Yet by the time of the Berlin Games,

22-year-old Owens was breaking records.

So his selection for the US Olympic team was irresistible.

But by travelling to Germany,

Owens was jumping from the frying pan of American racism

into the fire of Nazi ideology.

Sieg heil! Sieg heil!

How society was in 1936,

with Hitler and with this kid from the US.

You talk about pressure.

He, by far, has shouldered

a billion times more than any of us.

These Olympics were deliberately choreographed by Hitler

to show the world the physical superiority of a white master race.

For the 100 metre final, the Nazis would look on,

anticipating certain victory

for the German in lane three, Eric Borchmeyer.

-COMMENTATOR:

-The six fastest sprinters of the world are getting ready.

When the starting gun went,

Owens provided his own retort as he exploded out of the blocks.

Jesse Owens, when he moved away from the 1936 finalists,

seemed to be on silken threads.

He didn't seem to be doing anything that was remotely like hard work.

Owens is ahead! Strandberg and Borchmeyer fighting.

Osendarp challenges Wykoff.

Metcalfe comes up, but Owens wins in 10.3.

Second - Metcalfe, America.

Third - Osendarp, Holland.

Owens won by what seemed a mile in a time of 10.3 seconds.

Winning silver was his black team-mate, Ralph Metcalfe.

Borchmeyer came fifth.

The whole Aryan nation,

the whole white-supremacist approach that Hitler had for this Games,

it was, if you will, a coming-out party

for this new ideology that he was promoting.

With Owens winning, it destroys this idea.

In one ten-second moment in time, it throws it out the window.

I think that for Owens,

whether or not he believed what he did was significant,

later in life, he would understand that.

But I think for the rest of the world,

who were there to observe this very special Olympics,

what Owens did was really question this idea of white supremacy,

but also this idea of black inferiority.

By winning gold in Berlin, Jesse Owens inspired a new generation

of African-American sprinters to run the 100 metres.

One of these competed at Wembley Stadium in 1948,

at the first Olympics to take place after the Second World War.

-COMMENTATOR:

-The spectacular entry of the United States of America,

their massed ranks representing their country's...

Harrison Dillard was from the same city as his hero, Jesse Owens -

Cleveland, Ohio.

He'd even been to the same high school.

Known as a hurdler, through an accident of selection

he ended up competing in London in the 100 metres.

-COMMENTARY:

-Here's the first semifinal.

Harrison Dillard and Ewell of the US are on the far side.

I used to think to myself, "You've got to win, you can win.

"You will win."

They're away and Dillard, number 69, leaps into the lead.

Dillard ran in a competition where, both at the start

and on the finishing line, there was innovation.

For the first time at an Olympics,

Harrison and the other runners could use starting blocks.

The old method on cinder tracks of digging holes

had proved itself unsatisfactory,

because although it was perfect for the person who arrived first in the lane to dig holes,

it was less than perfect for the person who came to run the second race

and the third and, at the end of the afternoon, it was just mush.

So a contraption that you could put on top of the track,

which you could nail in, was perfect.

A phrase was now coined -

out of the blocks.

And blocks gave sprinters better lift-off at the start of the race.

It's a duel between Bailey and Ewell.

There was just a feeling,

the idea that you have something that is going to aid you.

I guess, psychologically, it does,

to be sitting on the ground instead of in the ground when you start.

A company manufactured them and manufactured them

so you could adjust the front block, the back block, so you could move it

forward and backwards and you could change the angle of it

at the front and back foot.

You could have your own pair. You could get them as you wanted them

and carry them around from one track to another.

In 1948, Dillard got through the heats

to find himself on the outside lane

in a final watched by a crowd of 82,000 people.

Set!

I don't think too many people gave me a chance of winning.

However, my coach, Eddie Finnegan, and I, we talked about it

and he said, "The watch doesn't lie,

"you can run just as fast as these guys can."

They're off, with Dillard on the outside, getting away in front.

As we watch the race in slow motion, left to right,

it's Dillard, Bailey, McCorquodale, LaBeach, Ewell and Patton.

After the initial start,

25, 30 metres out,

you've got to relax and go on to your so-called cruise mode,

then just see what happens.

Dillard still holds his lead with Ewell resolutely closing ground.

The tape struck my chest

and I said, "Well, I guess you did it."

But at the same time, using peripheral vision,

I did see another white jersey leaning into the tape.

I thought I'd won.

A revolutionary piece of technology would decide who had won the race.

It is anyone's race. They're in a line together. No-one's sure who's won.

For Olympic track events, the result of tight finishes

had always been decided by the visual evidence

of officials in the stands.

Now the photo finish was introduced to help them.

Barney started to celebrate and he was jumping up and down,

clasping his hands over his head.

-COMMENTARY:

-Barney Ewell dances with joy in the belief that he has won this great event.

I said, "Hell, maybe I didn't win."

The camera didn't lie

and confirmed that Dillard had won the gold medal.

But on that particular day, it was my turn.

MUSIC: "The Star-Spangled Banner"

I remember when the anthem played, our national anthem played,

I just felt the hair coming up on the back of my neck.

And here I was,

having gone to the same high school that my idol Jesse Owens had gone to.

And here I was, winning the same event

that my idol had won a dozen years before.

But the winner was Harrison Dillard,

who equalled the Olympic record of 10.3.

Harrison Dillard was one of the last skinnier,

lighter-framed runners who floated over the ground to win gold.

They would soon be replaced by bigger sprinters,

using something more elemental to reach top speed and run the race faster.

At 30 metres, enormous power is needed

for the next phase of the 100 metre Olympic final,

where, for just five seconds, athletes sprint at maximum velocity.

Now you are at, probably, full speed.

You are up at 90 degrees

and now you are what you would consider into your stride.

But that stride has to be quick and it has to be fast.

What fires a sprinter to reach top speed

is the raw power generated by a strongly muscled body.

You're talking about going from A to B as fast as possible.

The only way to do that is to have more powerful muscles,

bigger muscles, stronger muscles, faster muscles.

Sheer power began to decide who would win gold medals

from the Tokyo Games of 1964 onwards.

And with power came a new body type.

So those runners were bigger, erm,

they were more muscular.

And you saw that displayed on the track,

where there was much more power

in terms of their upper-body strength

and lower body as well.

The first of the great power runners ran in Tokyo -

Bob Hayes.

He was the prime example,

even to this day, of the most powerful,

natural sprinter I've ever seen.

In Tokyo, Bullet Bob powered his way through the heats.

British sprinter Peter Radford raced against Hayes in the second round.

Bob Hayes was a natural-born, powerful sprinter

who had the talent to unleash his powers without inhibition.

I was shocked when I saw how careless he was

in putting in his starting blocks.

He didn't seem to care.

Whereas we runners who didn't have that power

were meticulous to the centimetre

where we put the starting blocks,

lining up behind them to make sure they were dead straight

and they weren't out one degree out at an angle. Absolutely right.

He just put his starting blocks down and hammered them in,

apparently, wherever they landed.

Because to him, it didn't matter much about the finesse of it.

He had the power.

He had enormous power and he muscled his way over the track.

Having failed to qualify, Radford was in the stands

as millions of others watched the Tokyo final live by satellite on television.

Lining up in lane one, wearing 702, was Hayes.

What they witnessed was one of the greatest sprints in Olympic history,

run in the most demanding of conditions.

They had atrocious weather and it poured and poured on occasions.

But you've also got to remember the track in 1964 was a cinder track.

It didn't stand up particularly well to the wear and tear.

When you put your foot to the ground, you couldn't be absolutely certain

that you'd get a true surface to drive off

in exactly the same way that the previous stride had.

So what you're constantly doing

is struggling to produce your own rhythm and tempo

that the track is not helping you with at all.

He had the power to overcome this rather poor surface

and he just let it rip.

STARTING GUN FIRES

-COMMENTATOR:

-Hayes got a good one, so did Figuerola. Jerome in the centre of the picture!

Hayes won in Tokyo in a time of ten seconds.

Power running had shaved a vital 0.3 of a second off the world record.

Sometimes, after an Olympic final, you think

if you ran the race three times would you get three different winners?

With Bob Hayes, what you knew was if you ran it three times,

Bob Hayes would win it every time.

Just look at Hayes go!

The way Bob Hayes went, he should have left a trail of smoke.

No doubt about who was the best man, Bob Hayes.

To watch somebody like him, it was awesome, it was absolutely fantastic.

In fact, it inspires you, to some extent, to see somebody,

a human being, running with this raw physical talent.

It's incredible. I think it was incredible.

Also inspired by Hayes was a young American sprinter.

In 1964, when I saw Bob Hayes become the fastest man in the world,

and I was in high school, I knew right then

that I wanted to be just like him. He was my idol.

Jim Hines' admiration would soon translate into an ambition to go one better than Hayes

and break the ten-second barrier at the next Olympics.

And when Jim Hines competed at the 1968 Games in Mexico City,

he had the advantage of running on synthetic tracks.

The cinder track, you had to dig in and dig in and dig in.

And when the new track came along,

it was like you were floating on your toes.

Synthetic tracks are made of polyurethane and rubber

and allow sprinters to run at even greater speed.

You want a firm track

that has good bounce

because in sprinting, you contact the ground

and the shorter the contact, the better.

But you want it to throw you further down the track.

To a very great extent, the tracks the people were training on

were like the ones they competed on.

So you could learn the rhythm and tempo of your event on the training track

and transfer it to the competition track.

That was impossible in the cinder-track days.

-COMMENTARY:

-100 metres...men's finals.

Just before the Mexico City final,

Jim Hines played silent mind games with his rivals.

I used a silent code on the guys.

"He's not saying nothing!"

"I don't have to say nothing, cos I'm gonna kick your butts anyway!"

Hines, wearing 279, was running in lane three.

-COMMENTATOR:

-The 1968 Olympic Games 100 metre final.

I knew no matter how good I started,

that I was not going to beat three or four guys out of the blocks.

I knew they wouldn't have a tremendous lead on me,

so I wasn't worried, because I knew, sometimes, their mechanics start breaking down.

While they were breaking down, mine was always picking up.

Sprinting at high altitude was a painful experience for 100 metre runners

with their own brief intensity of effort.

For us sprinters, it was disastrous.

It was a great track, but I've never felt so bad in my whole life.

First time I'd ever felt bad, period.

Despite the thin air,

the power running of Hines was brutally efficient.

He ran his maximum-velocity phase to maximum effect.

Once I caught 'em, right then I felt good.

Cos once I catch you and go past you, it's all over with.

Miller is going well. And Hines comes through!

By 1968, Olympic time-keepers could measure the race

to a hundredth of a second.

So when Hines crossed the line, they recorded an historic moment.

A tremendous finish and look at the time there.

Inside the world record. The world record pending at 9.9

and Jim Hines takes the gold medal.

With a time of 9.95, power and the new tracks helped Hines

become the first man to run under ten seconds.

The fastest man in the whole world.

You're number one, nobody else is better.

That's the most prestigious title any human being could ever dream of or accomplish.

With the victories of Hines and Hayes,

it seemed that power running might be the preserve of black athletes.

But with the right training,

white runners could also win gold with turbo-charged sprinting.

Borzov got away well, but Kornelyuk with a brilliant start!

It's the little Russian, and Crawford has pulled up lame.

The little Russian coming through. And Borzov wins the gold.

At the Munich Games of 1972, the final was won

by the Soviet Valeriy Borzov, whose running style

and stony demeanour won him the nickname the Robot.

And in the early '80s, Britain had its very own power runner -

Alan Wells.

Wells had the build of a boxer.

He trained like one, too,

for the extra punch generated by bigger and better muscles.

We introduced the weights, static weights, plyometrics, hill runs.

These are all different ways to improve power and speed.

All this hard work was devoted

towards realising Wells's one moment of destiny on the track.

And this came at the 100 metre final in Moscow,

during the US-boycotted 1980 Games.

I'd focused on this for a long time, for a long, long time.

You know, as a young boy, I dreamt about being an athlete.

And here was this moment,

the one moment to achieve something that I'd always wanted to achieve.

When we got down to the blocks, I thought, "God, I don't feel right."

I didn't feel right. "Can we have it tomorrow?"

I thought, "You get a hold of yourself, mate,

"because you're not going to get another chance here."

When the gun went, I thought, "God, I didn't get a good start."

And the thing is, I had a gauge - two Cubans, one in lane one,

Leonard, who was my main competitor,

and we had Lara in lane seven, his training partner.

And I'd watched them training,

so I knew that Leonard was capable of beating him by a yard at about 30.

So my intention was to be in front of Lara by a yard.

I was just with him at 30.

With spectators on their feet,

Wells seized his moment during the maximum-velocity phase.

From 30, I just went away from him.

The Olympic final under way. Wells got away well and also going well is Lara

and on the far side, Leonard and Aksinin.

It's Wells on the near side for Great Britain.

On the far side, Leonard of Cuba. They can't see each other.

Leonard and Wells, absolutely together!

Leonard looks up at the clock. 10.24.

And Wells has got it!

Wells is waving now in the back straight and already celebrating.

You look at Valeriy Borzov and you look at Alan Wells,

both powerful runners, powerful 100 metre runners, big upper-body athletes.

I think that at that point, the transition was complete.

The coaches and trainers at that point knew that that's where it's at.

It's all about power.

But power isn't everything,

as the next phase reveals the race's biggest secret.

At 80 metres, runners are tantalisingly close

to the finishing line.

Muscles, sinews, limbs and lungs

are all straining for a maximum of effort.

When the foot comes into contact with the ground,

there are enormous forces.

The ground reaction times on each grounded foot

is something like two and a half times your own body weight.

Now that's a lot of weight on every stride.

And don't forget, you are doing these strides five times per second.

But there are limits, even to the superhuman qualities

of the greatest Olympic sprinters.

And at this point, something astonishing happens.

All the data from races from the beginning of data collection

show the greatest sprinters slow down at the end.

Incredibly, these most powerful of athletes have to slow down.

With such an intensity of effort,

they simply can't keep running this fast.

At that point, you're really trying to hold form.

That's what it's all about.

And you're holding form because you're starting to lose momentum,

you're starting to lose the power.

You've only got enough power for, I think it was 90 metres

I've been told, scientifically.

You'd think when you have the fastest men on Earth,

trained to a centimetre, and with years and years of preparation,

with colossal physiological reservoirs,

that they could run like the wind and last forever.

And they can't.

Because the demands are so great, the demand outstrips the supply.

'Ladies and gentlemen, a salute to the nations of the 23rd Olympiad.'

CROWD CHEERS

There was one great sprinter in the 1980s who was the master finisher

in the last 20 metres, where slowdown takes place.

This was Carl Lewis, who paraded his athletic genius in front

of spectators at the Los Angeles Coliseum during the 1984 Games.

'The man to watch, Carl Lewis, second from the left.'

Lewis showed them that sprinting could still be a thing of beauty.

He was a reminder of a time before power running.

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

Carl Lewis was a superb runner in the sense that he was the classic,

big, rangy, fluid, relaxed runner.

Shoulders down, hips high, very fluid.

He captured some of the spirit of the past

where he seemed to be stroking the ground.

And it didn't seem to be as much effort to him

as to the people who were struggling around him.

In my mind, the most perfect technical sprinter.

And of course, he was bloody quick!

But the reason Carl Lewis came first was that he could almost defy

the law of sprinting, which states that as you reach the line

you must slow down.

On the records that we have, he's the one who lost the least

of his top speed going to the final 20 of anybody, ever.

It was his signature quality, that Carl would decelerate

at a much slower rate than everyone else.

'Set.'

-STARTING PISTOL FIRES

-'This time they go.'

Just about every race you watch with Carl Lewis,

the first half of the race, it doesn't look like he's going to win the race, he's not in it,

but then he's able to pull out the victory at the last,

sometimes 20 and even ten metres at the end of the race.

'Carl Lewis is showing his paces, and it's Graddy.

'It's Carl Lewis and Graddy.'

It actually looked like he was speeding up at the end of the race,

but he's not speeding up, no-one is, everyone's decelerating at the end of the race.

He was just so much more efficient in terms of his technique,

he's a very clean runner,

and so he was decelerating at a much slower rate.

'Carl Lewis on the nearside.

'And America may have got one, two, three.'

CROWD CHEERS

'What a celebration in this stadium, just listen to them. 92,000 people.'

Lewis confirmed the 100 metres as THE event of the Olympics,

its winner the star of the Games.

Up until now, winning 100 metre gold made you famous, but not rich.

Now in the newly commercialised sports culture of the '80s,

Lewis was emphatically both.

There is something about Carl Lewis that people both loathed and loved.

They loved the fact that here was this man who was able to do

what he was able to do with his body athletically,

but they didn't like the fact that he was so narcissistic, I guess, about it,

that he told you about it in so many ways.

And I think that, you know, in our society at that time,

that's where we were evolving into this kind of individualism.

And he exemplifies that, especially in track and field.

Lewis made one runner who won bronze in Los Angeles jealous

and determined to depose him as champion by any means necessary.

The Jamaican-born Ben Johnson ran for Canada

and just scraped into the final of the 1988 Olympics.

For that final, Johnson lined up against Lewis.

My feeling of watching '88 was like everyone else on the planet.

You saw something

that was incredible. You saw something that was out of this world.

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

'The rest of them go first time and Ben Johnson got a brilliant start.

'It's Johnson away and clear and Lewis is not going to catch him.

'Johnson wins it.'

And so Johnson ran the perfect race, from start to finish.

'The world record has gone again.'

No-one was really amazed by Ben's rocket start -

he always got an incredible start.

Out of the blocks.

And no-one was amazed by the power that he was able to display

in the first 30 to 35 metres with his stride phase.

At maximum velocity.

And as for the slowdown...

The thing that was most shocking to me was that

he never really decelerated like we expected to see him

and we didn't see Carl able to make what always looked like

that surge at the end.

He never came back. That was... That was shocking.

'The final of the Olympic 100 metres.'

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

'The rest of them go first time and Ben Johnson got a brilliant start.

'It's Johnson away and clear and Lewis is not going to catch him.

'Johnson wins it, Lewis second, Christie third

'and the world record has gone again.'

The explanation for Johnson's astonishing world record

of 9.79 seconds came several days later.

I've just been handed a piece of paper that, if it's right,

it'll be the most dramatic story out of these Olympics

or perhaps any others.

I see Ben Johnson's yellow eyes. I don't know if you remember that.

Can you remember his eyes were not white?

The urine sample of Ben Johnson was found to contain the metabolites

of a banned substance, namely stanozolol.

Found guilty of taking illegal steroids,

Johnson was stripped of his gold medal.

I felt that the race had been hijacked,

that it was no longer what it was supposed to be.

It was a sham.

It was a fake, a complete fraud.

Until Seoul, the ambition to become the fastest man in the world

had been a ruthless but noble pursuit.

Now there was doubt and suspicion

about the running of the greatest race on Earth.

The game had changed. And the fact that it was the hundred,

it was saying something about how important this race was.

How important is 100 metres that you're going to take drugs

in order to be successful,

and think you can get away with it?

And so to the last phase of the 100 metre Olympic final.

Runners are metres from the line, a few strides from touching gold.

Now comes the final challenge -

to cross the line and finish first.

If you're involved in one of these finishes

where you and one, two, three, half a dozen other people

are virtually all on the line together,

then races are won and lost by how you present your body

to the photo finish equipment.

Runners get to the line and as they get there, they throw themselves forward.

That's a matter of very precise timing.

After 99 metres and all that effort, why lose now?

The biggest mistake you can make is to try early.

You see that happening all the time. A guy's head

goes forward three or four metres away from the tape,

and they've still got two or three strides to go and they've lost.

'While Chambers got away well, so did Drummond on the nearside

'and Chambers in the third lane going brilliantly.'

At Sydney in 2000,

the wrong finish cost British runner Dwain Chambers a medal.

'And Chambers, I think, was in contention for the bronze,

'I don't... We'll check on that in a moment.

'And Chambers looked so strong. And in the final stages,

'when Thompson comes on his shoulder, look, he dips here.

'He dips there, he dips there. It's too early, it's far too early,

'and he loses the bronze because of that early dip.'

Some people have been known to get it absolutely right and won races

that they might otherwise have been third in.

The right finish guaranteed another British athlete his gold medal

in Moscow, 20 years earlier.

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

'Wells got away well and also going well is Lara.

'On the far side, Leonard and Aksinin.

'But it's Wells on the nearside for Great Britain.

'On the far side Leonard of Cuba, they can't see each other.'

I knew it was very close and, as people know, I dipped for the line.

'Wells driving for the line, looking anxious across there.

'And did he get it or not?'

I think the "don't" is to dip the chest ten yards before the line.

The brain's probably thinking that, to dip at five yards.

Possibly that's even too early.

I think that the last stride before the line is when you dip.

I may have dipped a stride and a half before.

'It looked to me as if Wells was beaten into second place.'

It's probably two inches, maybe three inches,

but that's enough to lose.

'It is very, very close.

'Wells lunges at the line and takes the gold medal.'

Whether it was too early or too late,

it doesn't matter any more, does it?

It had taken 60 years to run the first sub-ten-second 100 metres

at the Olympics.

By the '80s, every gold medal winner was running this

and shaving winning times down by hundredths of seconds.

In the last 20 years, it has been sprinters born in a small island

in the Caribbean who have been running faster and faster.

Jamaica has a population of just three million.

But it has always had a history of athletic excellence.

The Jamaicans have always had talent.

They've always had some of the most talented sprinters and hurdlers

in the world.

From as far back as Donald Quarrie.

Raymond Stewart in the '80s.

And because of that, it's always been sort of the national sport.

Jamaicans seem to have the right genetics.

It is claimed the West African heritage of fast-twitch muscles

provides the explosive power needed for sprinting.

'They get away first time. Powell has got a very good start sorted,

'So did Dix. But here comes Usain Bolt.'

And Jamaicans bring the right kind of relaxation

to the pressure of competition.

Jamaican culture is very much a laid-back culture.

I think it helps them, to some degree, on the track, you know.

It's going to be what it's going to be,

and we go out and just run the race.

STARING PISTOL FIRES

'This time they go...'

In the '90s, gold medals went to athletes from the Jamaican diaspora.

'Christie comes storming through. It's Linford Christie!'

First in Barcelona in 1992,

running for Great Britain, Linford Christie won gold.

'And the British captain is the Olympic champion.'

I've got this vision of Linford in the Union Jack

when he won his medals.

You know, representing Great Britain, proud, happy to do so.

He's Jamaican.

Four years later, Christie was defending his title in Atlanta.

'Linford Christie.'

In the 1996 final, he faced another runner born in Jamaica,

but now running for Canada, Donovan Bailey.

'Canada. Donovan Bailey.'

CROWD CHEERS

When you're between the blocks in the 100 metres,

you're a different animal. And if you show up

and you have no confidence, then you will not get a gold medal.

There was sensation from the start.

CROWD SIGHS

Christie false started and was disqualified.

'Linford Christie has been asked to leave the arena

'and the champion walks away without being able to defend the title.

'Two false starts.'

When the race did begin, Donovan Bailey was lying fifth at 30 metres.

The start was bad.

I thought the gun kind of went quickly

cos I didn't want to false start.

With the finishing line rushing towards him,

Bailey was burning up the track at 27mph, over 12 metres per second.

It's really an out-of-body experience

because, essentially, the world slows down.

For the audience watching it,

they see something and it's finished in seconds.

But for myself, it's a week, it's a month, it's a year.

-STARTING PISTOL FIRES

-'This time they get away.

'Bolden got away well, also going well alongside him is Dennis Mitchell.

'And it's Bolden and Bolden comes through.

'And Bailey! Bailey wins it, Bolden second, Fredericks third.'

I crossed the line and I just looked over at the clock.

And I looked over at the clock and it said 9.8.

And I have no idea whether it said 9.8 anything,

I didn't know about the world record.

'Bailey won it, 9.84. 9.84 is a new world record!'

In the past, athletes left Jamaica to better themselves.

But now the island is producing runners

who are definitely not for export.

Intensity of competition combines with skilled coaching

to create winners.

From a psychological standpoint, Jamaicans from Jamaica,

representing Jamaica, know now that they can dominate.

So, as soon as you do that, they're not going to let go.

This is what lies behind

the emergence of Jamaica's own home-grown superstar.

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

CROWD CHEERS

Usain Bolt simply electrified the 2008 Olympics.

Well, if I think of the Beijing final...

I can hardly stop smiling, cos I do think it's wonderful.

CROWD CHEERS

In the 100 metre final in Beijing, Bolt showed a genius

that allowed him both to obey...

and then defy established laws of sprinting.

Getting to his marks, Bolt played no mind games,

just played to the cameras.

He's a million miles away from what we expect from a sprinter

traditionally, just before a big race.

You know, traditionally, what would we see?

Lots of focus, lots of nervous looks and glances.

Usain does the opposite to that.

And the reason he does the opposite,

he has the ability and he knows that.

That's a psychological edge over his opponents.

"How can this guy, before the biggest race of all our lives,

"be so calm and relaxed?"

Bolt started badly.

He was out of the blocks with the second slowest reaction time

of precisely 0.165 seconds.

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

CROWD CHEERS

And according to conventional wisdom, at six foot five

Bolt is just too tall for a sprinter.

At the very least, he should be at a disadvantage in the drive stage.

His uniqueness comes from the fact that

even though he's six foot five inches tall,

he's able to run and start and run through that drive phase

in the first 30 metres as if he's much shorter than he is.

STARTING PISTOL FIRES

But as the race progresses, Bolt's height becomes an advantage.

It gives him his eight-foot stride

that covers the 100 metres in 41 rather than the average 45 steps.

He covers much more ground with each stride than anyone else does.

So, at 30 metres into the race,

they really haven't gotten much of an advantage over him.

And that's a problem

because once everyone gets up into their upright running and transition

out of the drive phase and into their maximum velocity,

now he's just going to run away from everyone

because of the stride that he has.

He's got a fast turnover of legs, very fast turnover,

and a big range of movement.

Approaching the finishing line, Bolt decelerated.

But it wasn't his body forcing him to slow down.

Usain Bolt knew he was winning easily,

so it was he who decided to ease up.

The sheer naivety of it,

that his success even surprised him.

So that he was overcome with this sort of emotional response,

long before it was over.

I think it was just extraordinary to watch.

Even with this cheeky go-slow,

he had won the final in a world record time of 9.69 seconds.

I think I was live on air

and just had one of those moments that you're talking

and then the mic's on and I'm talking,

but there's no words coming out.

I'm like, "Wow, this is... This is special."

-STARTING PISTOL FIRES

-'They get away first time.

'Powell has got a very good start. So did Dix.

'But here comes Usain Bolt. Usain Bolt streaking away from the field.

'It's going to be gold for Jamaica.

'That is superb! It's a new world record!

'He has blown them all away!'

He's one of those Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis type of sprinters

that comes along and starts to kind of re-write the rules of,

you know, what we previously thought was the way to do it.

'Usain Bolt is the Olympic champion!

'That was phenomenal and he goes ballistic.'

A year after Beijing, Bolt was at it again,

winning the World Championships

and breaking his own world record with a time of 9.58 seconds.

So, can Bolt run faster?

If you go back and you look at 20 of his races

and you pull out his best zero to ten, wherever that was,

and his next 20 to 30, wherever that was,

and you paste all his best segments together,

you can argue that he can run sub-9.30.

And can anybody run faster than Bolt? Even break the nine-second barrier?

Or is there a speed limit?

You know what, I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know if it's possible.

For over a hundred years,

there has been an incredible journey in speed,

from Tom Burke's 12 seconds in 1896

to Usain Bolt's 9.58 seconds in 2009.

If they could run against each other,

the Jamaican would have a huge 20 metre winning margin.

What the great sprinters of the past do prove is that the promise of gold

will always drive athletes to run faster and faster.

'Just look at Hayes go.

'And the way Bob Hayes went, he should have left a trail of smoke.'

'Inside the world record, Jim Hines takes the gold medal.'

So in the future,

surely anything might be possible in this most iconic of Olympic events.

I start with the premise that everything can be broken.

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