Usain Bolt

Brother gave me this to read, because it's not something I'd normally pick up. I mean, I think Bolt is cool and am as amazed by his athletic feats as anyone, but I can't say I've ever felt any reason to get to know behind the amazing runs better.

But I thought it was a solid book. The blurb tries to play up some hardships from Bolt's life, all "oh it hasn't always been easy, I've suffered injuries and I was in a car crash once", which fell flat if you ask me. The car crash sounded horrible, but the only one who got seriously hurt as a friend of his, and we never see her again after the one chapter that sorta deals with the accident. A throw-away line mentions her making a full recovery, then it's focused more on Bolt's foot injuries. I'm sure that was a traumatic experience that affected him a lot, but it doesn't come off like that in the book.

And it didn't have to, I thought the book was interesting enough on it's own. I don't know, it's something special to get inside the head of someone who was broken several world records and won six olympic medals. Reading about his approach to work-outs and what is going through his had before he runs WAS enough to keep me reading.

In a way I feel maybe it was written too early. I saw on wikipedia that Bolt has announced that he'll retire din 2017, which makes sense since he'll be over 30 then and can't reasonably be expected to keep running the way he has done so far, but why publish the book while he might still be able to perform well, when things could still happen? Though, for someone who hates losing as much as he does, maybe writing a biography that ends with him on top was the only way.… (more)

Usain Bolt's autobiography is one of my favorite books. It tells the story of his life up until now in great detail. It starts all the way back when Bolt was a poor Jamaican child growing up in rural Trelawney, and recounts everything that has happened in Usain Bolt's life to within a year and a half of my writing of this review. He began his life playing all types of sports and helping his family out with physical labor. He actually did not even want to do track until his school teacher asked him to do so. After his first race, he and everybody around him knew he was special. He won regional, national, and international tournaments and blew by his competition. He truly proved to be "faster than lightning."
This is a fantastic autobiography. Everybody knows that Usain Bolt is the fastest man on the planet, but not everybody knows what it took for him to get to that point both mentally and physically. Bolt recounts all of that in a vivid, entertaining, understandable manner. This book really gives off Bolt's personality; when one reads the book, one feels like they are hearing Bolt tell the story to him or her in person. That really adds to the story as a whole. I would recommend this book to anybody who is a fan of Usain Bolt.… (more)