Words by Eddie STATS Houghton
If you’re going to do a site called Large Up, then Usain Bolt haffi get a mention–ever since his World Championship times re-broke his own speed records from the Beijing Olympics, all the man seems to do is collect respects.
I was actually hoping to be posting today to congratulate him on being Time Magazine’s Man of The Year 2009, but he somehow got beat out for the cover by Ben Bernanke, the guy who broke the US economy and then (sort of) un-broke it. (Not surprisingly, our youth handily destroyed Big Ben in the online poll, coming in just behind Obama and the Iran protestors. Apparently, 100 meters in 9.58 seconds is more popular than double-digit unemployment.)
In the SAME WEEK however, he won the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year award for the second year in a row. The only other athletes to pull that off have been Roger Federer and Muhammad “last name Ever, first name Greatest” Ali.
Also in the same week he successfully pulled off a little event called the 9.58 Superparty in St. Ann, Jamaica, attracting a host of both heavyweights and rising stars to perform for charity, including but not limited to: Marcia Griffiths, Tifa, VoiceMail, Aidonia, DingDong, Elephant Man, super-selector Tony Matterhorn and dancer Mystic Davis…not mention foreign powers Ludacris and The-Dream.
But if we’re going to judge the man by the company he keeps, we have to point out that in addition to parring with the Obamas and Alis, he also found time to adopt a baby cheetah in Kenya and bless a local Puma in-store right here in NYC with the selectors from Deadly Dragon Sound, our partners in the Lower Manhattan Bashment Council (<–this is real. It exists.) So in short, for all the things you do both great and small:
Mr. Bolt, Large bout yourself.