It was like the return of Beatlemania.
In Daegu Stadium at the World Championships on Sunday night, I watched a host of kids aged about 11 or 12 screaming with excitement and fighting to get near Usain Bolt after his quite stupendous 200 metres triumph and couldn’t help casting my mind forward to London next year. The Muhammad Ali of athletics is on his way to an Olympic Stadium near you.It just reinforced for me how fantastic it could be to have Bolt there. There really is an Ali-like aura about this guy that is now transcending all sports.
If I was going into schools four years ago talking about the Olympics, they weren't interested in too many Olympians then -- it was Lewis Hamilton, Roger Federer, David Beckham, people like that. Now it's Usain. He feels more important than any of them and here was a glorious reminder why, all things being equal, he'll be the iconic figure of our Games.
I've spoken to him and he's told me how he wants to blow people's minds in London, to make yet another extraordinary impact that will cement the status of legend that he wants for himself.
London is consuming him; I know he's going to base himself in England for quite a while before the Games.
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