John Ross made waves before the NFL draft by saying he could run the 40 faster than Usain Bolt. Now another Olympic sprinter has shown how preposterous that idea is.
Olympic sprinter destroys John Ross’ 40 time after Bengals receiver says he’s faster than Usain Bolt
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
Christian Coleman is a track star at Tennessee and a 2016 Olympian. After hearing Ross call out Bolt, he decided to take to the football field to put down a 40 of his own — and utterly destroyed Ross’ 4.22 he ran in Indianapolis.
One of the longstanding arguments by football fans is that players are much faster than they appear at the combine because they’re running on turf, not a running track like sprinters. Coleman’s 40 appears to blow this idea out of the water.
In Ross’ defense, his claim was based largely on ESPN’s Sport Science, which is vaguely sports and not scientific.
“I would compare my speed to Usain Bolt’s just basically using the same technology that (ESPN’s) Sport Science did. They said I have faster foot contact than him, he has longer strides,” Ross said Thursday. “I think it would definitely be a good race. In the 40-yard dash, I think I would get Usain Bolt. Usain Bolt, I know I can get you in the 40. Whenever you want to meet me up, we can do it.”
Considering Coleman’s personal best in the 100 meters is 9.95 seconds and he beat Ross’ 40 time by 0.10 seconds, we can probably infer that Usain Bolt — who holds the world record with 9.58 seconds — would blow him out of the water.
Foot speed and stride length be damned — gotta go with Bolt here.
