Usain Bolt: The Failure That Changed Everything

Usain Bolt (0:02)

You have to learn how to lose before you can learn how to win. You have to understand that you will fail. But when you fail, what do you learn from the failure? So every time I've lost, I've said, what did I do wrong? What do I need to improve? Everybody who's a professional has talent. It's who works the hardest on their talent that will be the best. There's no way you're going to intimidate me. All that matters is that when we line up and that gun goes, you better be ready.

SPEAKER_2 (0:31)

That is the voice of the greatest sprinter of all time and the fastest man on the planet, the great Usain Bolt. This was episode 300 of High Performance and I couldn't help but cast my mind back to when Jake and I first sat outside the Timir-Neos headquarters in Portsmouth back in November 2019 And we wondered whether anybody would want to listen to long conversations about how incredible people think. And this episode is number 300 That's not a figure either of us ever had in our head. When we wrote down our wish list of guests in that cafe, one name would have sat right at the top of it. And it took us five years to be able to get him. I'm talking about Usain Bolt. Not only is he eight Olympic gold medals or his world records over one and two hundred meters that still stand to this day, he was about speaking to the fastest human being who had ever lived, about the journey to get there.

We recorded this interview in front of 3,000 people live on stage in Orlando at IFS Unleashed, and what you're about to hear is not the version of Usain Bolt that you may have seen before. In this one, he talks about the Olympics that nobody remembers him running, Athens in 2004, when he didn't even make it out of the first round. He talks about the moment his coach told him he'd not worked hard enough and he knew intuitively it was true.

And then he talks also about competing for his entire career with scoliosis and never once choosing to use it as an excuse. There's a brilliant line in here I want you to pay particular attention to. It's credited to Glenn Mills, his coach, and Usain told us it took him two years to understand what he meant. Listen to his explanation of the lessons that followed. I think it's an incredible insight into an incredible man.

So, live from a stage in Orlando, I'd like to welcome to High Performance Usain Bolt.

SPEAKER_3 (2:23)

Ladies and gentlemen, please put your hands together and welcome to the stage at IFS Unleashed, Usain Bolt.

Nice to see you, take a seat. Just a nice casual conversation with two and a half thousand friends. How are you?

Usain Bolt (2:51)

I'm good, I'm good.

SPEAKER_3 (2:52)

It's nice to have you with us. So welcome to IFS Unleashed, welcome to High Performance. Let's talk then about injuries and perception of you. You know, like, for so many years, all of us watched you, and we saw you walk out at the start of a race and thought, oh, there's Usain Bolt, he's going to win the gold medal yet again.

Is it a strange position for you to be in when you're considering not even going to an Olympics because of the kind of the perception of you being on crutches or hobbling? I saw you limping very slightly as you came out today.

Usain Bolt (3:19)

Injuries are part of sports in general. I think in any sports you go, you have to understand that if you push your body, because you want to be the best at times, you might overdo it or at times competing, you might get injured. So it's a part of the sports, but I'm happy it happened to me now when I'm retired, because I know a lot of footballers that have got this injury and it has ended their career. So for me, I'm happy that it happened at the end.

SPEAKER_2 (3:50)

How did you make the decision to eventually walk away from the sport?

Usain Bolt (3:55)

For me, at the start of my career, I made an end goal where I wanted to. When I started out, I said, this is what I want to achieve. And my biggest goal was to actually win three Olympics back to back. That was my main goal. And that was my target. So when I actually got to that target, for me, it was like a hard road of like 10, 12 years of continuous work. So for me, it was like, yes, this is it. So I had gotten to my goal and that was it for me.