Forget gender tests. They need to whip out something a little more sophisticated over at the track and field world championships in Berlin, some test that can ascertain beyond the shadow of a doubt whether Usain Bolt is actually a human being and not some sort of omnipotent space alien. ↵↵Because I, for one, am getting a little nervous. Tell Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones to break out their skinny ties, because I’m having visions of Superman 2 and General Zod flying into the White House. It’s time that we stopped celebrating this “Jamaican” sprinter and instead put together a coalition of our finest diplomats and statesman and cultural leaders to formally pose him the question on all of our minds: “Mr. Usain Bolt, exactly who are you, where are you from, and what is it that you want from us humble earthlings?”↵
Usain Bolt: What Is He Doing Here On Earth?
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↵In the video above, Bolt lowers his own 200m world record by .11 seconds to 19.19, just days after he gave the 100 meters the same treatment, lowering his own world record .11 seconds to 9.58. Dropping times at this rate in the sprints is generally the type of thing that happens over the course of decades. Consider that it took the 100-meter world record 13 years to be lowered .11 seconds from Leroy Burrell’s mark of 9.85 in 1994 to Asafa Powell’s 9.74 in 2007. Since then, Bolt has lowered the mark .16 seconds, and three days ago, he dropped it .11 in one race. ↵↵Then he turns around and pulls the same move on the 200? No no NO, uh uh, no way. It’s come time for me to go all chicken-head over here, and it’s not because I’m calling ‘roids. It’s because I’m calling “space alien.” ↵
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↵Sometimes space aliens come to earth with superpowers and wreak all kinds of havoc, or sometimes they devote themselves (after a period of loneliness and soul-searching) to doing good for the sake of the pathetic earthlings that they come to pity even though they are largely incapable of human emotions. ↵
↵↵But other times, space aliens arrive here and decide to use their special powers just to, you know, have a good time and kick the crap out of humans in their favorite pastimes and reap all the spoils of their super abilities. Tiger Woods, of course, is a space alien, although he still refuses to admit it. Wayne Gretzky, another known space alien. And then there’s Chocolate Thunder (Earth name: Darryl Dawkins), a confessed space alien who has admitted to me on several occasions that if he’d wanted to he could have worn a lycra suit with his underwear on the outside and fought crime and whatnot, but he’s just a mellower kind of alien than that. He’s from Planet Lovetron, and all they do up there is party and mack and listen to interstellar funk music made by fellow space aliens like George Clinton and Bootsy Collins. All Choc wanted to do when he arrived in our system was break backboards and party in the discos all night and slay many hos, and given his superpowers, he was able to do all three of those things with a frightening efficiency. That was good enough for him, and it caused no problem for anyone except for the backboards, which are Chocolate Thunder’s sworn enemy (evidently, on Lovetron, backboards are like rats).↵
↵↵In conclusion, Usain Bolt, I want to tell you something. If all you want to do is keep lowering the men’s sprint records down to previously unthinkable numbers and otherwise hanging out in the discos as you are wont to do and no doubt making many, many, many women very happy with your superliciousness, then yo yo, no autopsy, no foul. But I’m watching you, man. You start exhibiting even the slightest General Zod-like tendencies, I’m telling Tiger and Choc Thunder that we have a problem. At which point, it will be on like Donkey Kong.↵
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
