‘Would have run way faster if I’d continued’: Usain Bolt

September 11, 2025

Usain Bolt believes he could have clocked an astonishing 9.42 seconds in the 100 metres if he had access to today’s advanced carbon-plated “super-spikes”.

The Jamaican sprint legend set his iconic 9.58-second world record at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, breaking his previous best of 9.69 from the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Remarkably, his record has now stood for 16 years – surpassing the 14-year reign of Jim Hines’s 9.95 mark, set at the 1968 Mexico City Games.

Research conducted by Puma – the brand that outfitted Bolt during his legendary career – suggests he could have run the 100 metres in 9.42 seconds using today’s high-tech sprinting shoes. Speaking ahead of the World Championships in Tokyo, Bolt backed the claim, saying, “I fully agree.”

“Someone who continued after I retired was Shelly-Anne Fraser-Pryce and I saw what she did – she got faster with the spikes,” Bolt said on Thursday. “I probably would have run way faster if I’d continued and if I knew that spikes would have got to that level maybe I would have, because it would have been great to compete at that level and running that fast.”

Kishane Thompson lit up the Jamaican championships in June with a blistering 9.75-second run – the fastest 100m time recorded in the past decade – elevating him to sixth on the all-time list. Despite the surge in performances, Bolt isn’t losing sleep over his long-standing world record.

“I think the talent is there and those who are coming up will do well but, at this present moment, I don’t think they will be able to break the world record,” Bolt said.

Since Bolt’s retirement in 2017 – after amassing six Olympic golds and seven world titles in the 100m and 200m – no Jamaican man has claimed a global sprint title. The last was Bolt himself, completing the 100m and 200m double at the 2016 Rio Olympics.