Name: Justin Gatlin on his Journey to Defeating Usain Bolt in the 2017 World Championship
Uploaded: 2024-06-23T17:08:29.000Z
Duration: 14 min 4 s
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All right, I won't take up too much of your time.

I know you guys want to get out, have some fun, and all I know is how to be fast.

So I want to start with telling you that the reason, one of the reasons why I'm here is because I believe that as an elite athlete, it's my obligation, my duty to be able to pass on a knowledge that I needed to be able to make me successful on to the next generation and generation after that.

And why I said is because track and field, no matter if you do distance, throws, jumps, sprints, whatever, you're lucky if you get to turn professional.

And why I said is because there's no handpick.

We all know that you got to run as hard as you can, as fast as you can, as long as you can, just to get a phone call and maybe a letter in the mail, and hopefully from a school that you desire to go to.

So what I'm going to tell you tonight is one of the stories I've been, I've been in track and field for what, maybe over 20 years of just professional track and field.

And that was my whole, that was my whole adult life.

So with that, I've won Olympic gold medals, world championship medals, broken the world record, had my ups and downs.

One story stands out to me the most, and I wanted to bring it here, and I was telling Gary about this, is that I want to talk about 2017, my world championships, when I beat Usain Bolt.

And why I'm going to talk about this, not because I beat Usain Bolt, but what led up to that moment in time of taking that victory.

In 2016, I fractured my ankle, and I still made the Olympic team, rehabbed, got an Olympic team, medaled.

After I got that silver medal, I still felt hollow, because I wasn't my whole self.

So going into 2017, I had issues from my ankle leading up to my hip.

So I wasn't able to be the best starter I used to be.

I was a great starter, one of the world-class best starters.

When you watch a lot of my I couldn't do that in 17, because my hip would not allow me.

And usually as an athlete, we have our habits, right?

We run from the front, we run from the back, we pace, we do whatever, and that's what has led us to our success.

Now mind you, from 2017 before, I usually was known as the best starter in the world.

And in one moment, I realized watching old tapes of YouTubes of myself, I wasn't leading the pack in college.

So at some point in time, I wasn't the best start in the world.

I had to learn and teach myself how to be a better starter, to compete against people like Usain Bolt, Tyson Gay, Johan Blakes.

And I said, if I could do that and be successful then, I can retrain myself to be just as successful now.

We got ready for World Championships in 2017.

Saturdays, Sundays, worked all the way through.

And when I finished completing the task that I needed, which is to be a finisher and not a starter, I was confident in myself.

Leading up to that, I didn't want to be able to have a And usually when you run against guys like Usain, his coach and himself are going to watch what you're going to do.

The crowd is full of people. 100,000 people in the stands.

And everybody's cheering for him, clapping for him.

And you know, I was basically like the top competitor to Usain and everybody else in the field.

Stick to what my plan was not to show my my competitors that I had a finish.

So I had a good start, maintain, went through.

So you're hearing the whole stadium is starting to kind of get this and kind of feeling this.

So as I made it to the semis, going into the finals.

We had about an hour and a half before we had to go into the finals.

And as we walked down into the stadium and the stadium opened up and you see more more people in the stadium.

It's the finals, the world championships, the last one that Usain is going to run.

And as we went down the roll call once again, lane one, lane two, lane three.

Have you ever been outside of a stadium where it's like people are shooting a goal or scoring a goal in the stands.

Your fastest people from each heat are usually in the middle, seated.

For whatever reason, they put me in lane eight.

So as I got to lane eight, the energy that they gave Usain was the same as they gave for me, but in reverse.

It was the loudest boo I've ever heard in my life.

And I remember thinking, if I ever got booed like this, I would just shrivel up and die.

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Justin Gatlin on his Journey to Defeating Usain Bolt in the 2017 World Championship

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