by Nick Rimmer

Created on: January 06, 2009   Last Updated: August 30, 2011

No doubt for many, Michael Phelps will be the leading athlete of 2008. Winning eight gold medals was magnificent - it was unprecedented, eclipsing the record of the great Mark Spitz. Yet, there was also an air of inevitability about it. Yes, there were some narrow squeaks, but you can't help feeling Phelps, the American public and the big corporations would have been disappointed had he won a mere six or seven golds.

The real athlete of the year is a man who, in just 9.69 seconds of sheer brilliance and exuberant extravagant celebration, not just fulfilled a lifelong ambition in winning Olympic gold, but also resurrected the sport of athletics. That man, of course, is Usain Bolt.

It seems ridiculous now, but at the start of 2008, Usain Bolt was not even considered a contender for the Olympic blue riband event and title of the fastest man on the planet. He was not even a serious contender for the Jamaican 100 metre team. Sure, Bolt was considered a likely medallist in his specialist event, 200 metres, having won silver at the 2007 World Championships. But the talk in the sport was of unfulfilled potential, perhaps harsh for a 21-year-old, but one who had won a World Junior title before his home crowd in Kingston as a 15-year-old in 2002.

That did not mean that the 100 metres was still not the most anticipated event of the Beijing Olympic track programme, pitting World Champion Tyson Gay, all muscle and business on the track, against World Record holder Asafa Powell, another Jamaican, who had yet to fulfil the promise of his languid elegance in the short sprint. It's just that Bolt wasn't considered to be a major contender by early May. That had all changed.

On 3rd May, Bolt served notice of his intentions for the year, producing an astonishing 9.76-second 100-metre win in Kingston, just 0.02 off Powell's World Record. A few weeks later in New York, Bolt truly announced himself as a major contender, setting a new World Record of 9.72. Gay set a new personal best (9.85), yet trailed in by three metres, an absolute thrashing in such a short race and from a young upstart in only his fifth 100-metre race.

And so to the iconic Bird's Nest Stadium in Beijing and the Olympic 100-metre final. At the start, Bolt moved to his blocks with his major rivals, but was the last to settle. He remained upright surveying the opposition as the others settled into their starting positions. A final pointing of the finger to the sky and he was ready. At 30 metres the field

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