Usain Bolt, who is currently 16 years old and holds the world record of 9.58 seconds for the 100 meters, said that he could have run 9.42 with the carbon-plated “super-spikes” used by modern sprinters.
It has now stood for more than 14 years, surpassing Jim Hines’s 9.95 set at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. The Jamaican made his mark at the 2009 world championships in Berlin, breaking his own 9.69 record from the previous year’s Beijing Olympics.
Speaking at an event before the world championships in Tokyo, Bolt stated, “I fully agree,” in response to research by Puma, the firm that wore his shoes during his illustrious period of supremacy, which predicted that he would run 9.42 in today’s shoes.