IOC President criticizes Bolt for lack of respect

I completely agree. And not that I'm hating, but I'm interested to know if he's clean or not. There was something a little too easy about all of this. Considering that he ran a 19.9 in the World Championship just under a year ago?! Now he single-handedly DESTROYS his competitors and runs an unprecidented 19.3 less than 12 months later?! Hmmmm.....

We really don't need another trash talking, show-boating track and field star. There are no excuses for this ignorant behavior. As his family is jumping up and down and hollering for his abilities, they should also teach him some manners and how to be gracious. Last, but not least, let's hope this young man is clean. As much as I love track and field, the doping scandals are becoming very disheartening in this sport.

When he goes back home and notices that his answering machine is not loaded with endorsement offers nor does his agent return his calls he will be the first to jump up and scream racism. He would make the same claim if he came up dirty. Gold medals do not humble a self centered ass. It is a shame he did not research why Carl Lewis was not only despised by his teammates but should have also recieved many more endorsement offers than he did. They do it to themselves and then cry racism.

Sounds like sour grapes to me. T&F is a competitive sport where the best performer wins. He pounds his chest. So what! They wanted to catch him and they did not. Sounds like a familiar refrain regarding black men nowadays--know your place boy.

Yeah I guess it is hard to believe that a black man can run a race without cheating--beating another black man's record--who didn't cheat.

LOLnotagain, your comments were really over the top. I didn't like the attitude of Bolt in his winning, but he doesn't deserve your vicious accusations, especially since he won the gold in the 200M against my first cousin, Shawn Crawford. He was not gracious and was very immature, and has some growing up to do. Hopefully, he will become more gracious with age and time, but that had to be an exciting moment for him, his family and his country. My cousin won the gold in the 200M in Athens and I was so estactic for him that I outside in the streets shouting and bragging of his victory. So, you can loose yourself in such victories. But, there is no need to begin unfounded accusations. I am sure that with all the embarrassment with doping in track and field that extensive testing was done on these athletes prior to their participation. So stop the hate and just hope that the young man eventually matures.

LOLnotagain, your comments were really over the top. I didn't like the attitude of Bolt in his winning, but he doesn't deserve your vicious accusations, especially since he won the gold in the 200M against my first cousin, Shawn Crawford. He was not gracious and was very immature, and has some growing up to do. Hopefully, he will become more gracious with age and time, but that had to be an exciting moment for him, his family and his country. My cousin won the gold in the 200M in Athens and I was so estactic for him that I outside in the streets shouting and bragging of his victory. So, you can loose yourself in such victories. But, there is no need to begin unfounded accusations. I am sure that with all the embarrassment with doping in track and field that extensive testing was done on these athletes prior to their participation. So stop the hate and just hope that the young man eventually matures.

I agree with you on some notes LOLnotagain, but Carl Lewis was never a showboat. He was disliked because he was aloof, didn't associate with many of the athletes, and didn't care for the press. But I don't recall him ever acting like a baffoon when he won. He did get major endorsements and from my understanding still has some to this day. The bigger problem with Bolt will not be his showboating, but the fact that will be hard to market him to the rest of the world because he's Jamaican and they (like it or not) have an unsavory reputation. Not just the athletes, but the entire culture as a whole. And as for Midwest Guy, I couldn't disagree more. It's not sour grapes. The IOC and the track and field fed definitley want to clean up their sport, so every little thing is going to be scruttinized because of the black eye that has been put on the sport. And I too am interested to know if this guy is clean because you don't run those times and shatter records that easily when you were placing 2nd a year ago.

I'm amazed that we, as Black people, would jump on this bandwagon in criticizing Bolt for his lack of respect. If you go to any basketball court, domino table, spades game, or football field where Black men are playing, you are going to see and hear all types of seemingly disrespectful comments that add up to nothing more than gamesmanship. Whether or not you agree with what is being said or done is a matter of personal taste. However, the fact remains that generation after generation of young black men get socialized this way, be they Usain Bolt or Carl Lewis. The comments that criticize Bolt's performance are direct criticisms of Black culture and Black socialization. I actually think that it is pretty racist of the IOC President to come out and say what he says. If he has something constructive to say to Usain Bolt, then do that. Why the need to go public with this...especially if you think that the young man needs to do some growing up. Be a man and go to the young man. Don't use the press to dump more hazardous comments out there.

Ignorance is bliss and unfortunately many people are very blissful.

Was Rogge criticising when the French said they would crush the Americans. Did he criticize the American pole vaulter for her comments. No!! He criticizes Bolt for something I have seen countless track and field winners do. I've noticed that most of you don't even know that his 'showboating' is actually a dance from Jamaica. Something he did for his countrymen and the rest of the Caribbean who are proud of him. I agree with Everett. Lastly to Anonymous the biggest doping offenders in track and field have been the Americans. I must irk some that a small black island can produce world class sprinters. Leave the young man to enjoy his glory. He has brought back excitement to a sport that has suffered badly.

He won. Period. He should be able to celebrate however he wants. Go Bolt!!!!

The I.O.C President is a hypocrite who wants world press attention. The only thing he has in common is that he RUNS his mouth while Bolt does his running on the track. Bolt has nothing to correct or adjust as he matures. Can anyone tell me since the 2008 Olympics started, how many winners shook their defeated opponents hands in any sport? I think he is just echoing sentiments of American media who incidentally is not showing track and field live, but way down in the 12:am to wee hours of the morning. But was showing all sport prior to the track and field events Rogge is the epitome of the KKK disguised as even minded and who thinks we are back in slavery days where Blacks should know their place or He will whip them like what he is trying to do verbally This is 2008 where all human beings are equal and have a right to be free. Rogge SHUT UP and leave the sporting body as you have brought the I.O.C into disrepute.

They need to leave Bolt alone and find out how old those little gymnastic girls really are. YOU THINK?!

Let the man be himself. There are too many fake and phony people in the world suppressing their true feelings.

What a refreshing personality... I love his dramatics before and after races. And if I was blowing out the competition that badly, I would pound my chest too with 15 m to go. And how's he supposed to celebrate by congratulating others when they're so far behind? Is he supposed to wait eons for others to finish their races? Of course he's going to start celebrating by himself when there's no one else around for a long time.

Didn't they test him for drugs like 11 times and found nothing? I think he has a right to celebrate his victory. People react in different ways- let him enjoy his moment.

I think his celebrating was a bit over the top, but he can do what he wants because he is ALL THAT!He won! Most track stars are prima donnas--what else is new? The thing that pisses me off about the NBC coverage of the Olympics is the way they focus on American athletes even when they SUCK. Sometimes the pro-American coverage is to the point that they will focus on the American athlete in 2nd, 3rd or 4th place and won't even put the camera on the athlete who actually WON the event. I want to know who is the best athlete, not who is the best or cutest American on the field.

They must leave the kid alone! That's what kids do. They gloat. And he is supernatural. I think his showmanship is also good for the sport, see how the otherwise subdued chinese crowd responds to him - he is the show. This reminds me of how many tennis critics responded to the Williams Sisters in late 1990s. Today they realise how good for tennis their show-woman-ship has actually been for otherwise a non popular sport like tennis. They must thank god Bolt is actually not too cute, otherwise, his theatrics would have been twice as intense. And the other atlethes actually love him. Even Americans hug him and lift him after races. He is an amazing kid.

He is not a kid in reality, we as Americans should hold a higher expectation socially for people over the age of 18! When I attended college in Milan, Italy, the expectation socially for the way one must act as a young adult was different from the sates. The problem is that he was taunting his opponents close to the end of the run, when clearly he was the winner. I have nothing against celebrating victory for ones country and sports event. It is a difference to have confidence and believe that you can obliterate your opponents (referring to the French swimmer) through competition. It is another thing to be a pompous ass (Jamaican sprinter) to people whom have not yet achieved your goal. This is the Olympics people not the American sports arena!

Think about it people! Why, oh why would the PRESIDENT of the IOC criticize one of the athletes of his own sporting event?! Perhaps there was more than we saw on TV. He obviously had a very good reason to say what he said. And for those who are crying that Rogge is "picking" on Bolt and it's "racism"... I won't even comment on such stupidity.

That ghetto fabulousness still isn't going to cut it in the real world, no matter how some here find it "refreshing." And, why is it always only the black men who do it? Classy is classy, and, Bolt, while amazing, is totally uncouth.

LOL @ the feeble-minded lemmings who latched onto Bob Costas' cynical, corporate-crafted twisting of the single most breathtakingly memorable moment of these Olympic Games... an interpretation given a day after the actual moment itself, when most of the world had already had the chance to revel in it LIVE, while NBC carefully searched for an angle in which to present Bolt that would pose the least danger to their self-coronated golden boy Michael Phelps. Absolutely no-one in the worldwide media was portraying Bolt as a cocky prick until Costas (who ironically worships the brain-damaged braggart Muhammad Ali) decided to go off on a self-righteous rant, egged on by failed ex-athlete Ato Bolden who a) has never tasted championship on that level, and b) never bothered to let that stop him from engaging in much more ridiculous antics after races in which he usually finished second and third. Sickeningly hypocritical. To the people who MATTER, his fellow competitors, the 91,000 breathless fans watching in Beijing, the billions more around the world who bought 2 million of his Pumas less than 24 hours after the race, and last but not least his family and the ENTIRE ISLAND OF JAMAICA (to whom his post-race dance was directed, for the dolts who offer opinion without insight), absolutely nothing he did was disrespectful in any way. NBC has decided to rewrite Bolt's narrative as 'obnoxious upstart bastard' to protect its own brand, and you mindless drones have fully bought into it. Maybe if some of you sheep had actually had the opportunity to watch the event live as the rest of the world did, you would have recognised the moment for exactly what it was: sheer, UNBELIEVING exuberance of a youth on his first trip to the Olympics desperately trying to fend off a perceived threat from the second-fastest man in the world (friend, rival and fellow countryman Asafa Powell), glancing sideways repeatedly to gauge just how close Powell was to him, seeing absolutely nobody there, and suddenly realising halfway through the race that at that very moment he was simply unequalled in the history of human achievement and was beating seven of the very best sprinters on the planet by an unbelievably wide margin. The look on his face is ASTONISHMENT, for those not familiar with the emotion. As he stated quite plainly afterwards, "I wasn't celebrating, I was just happy"... and if you don't know exactly what he means by that, you're an idiot. P.S.- Rogge is an unbelievable moron for many reasons, not least of which is that Bolt has an affable relationship with the majority of the athletes he beat so soundly. Every single one of them spoke highly of him afterwards. And for the guy who claims to be Shawn Crawford's cousin... you are aware that only two years ago your 'cousin' was doing MUCH MUCH more obnoxious crap during professional meets, right? By the way... glad to see that his two-year ban for drug cheating is finally up. If it were up to me every dirty cheat in the sport would be automatically banned for life and serve at least 9 months in prison, but I guess being happy for winning a race is worse than robbing clean, more deserving natural athletes of medals and championships.

I am amazed at how many people found Bolt's celebration over the board. I see that type of celebration all the time. I saw Phelps doing a lot of celebration after winning the relay in swimming. No one said anything about that, but oh he's America's white golden boy!! he can scream, do some showboating, no one complains, but a black man from jamaica? No way!!!

DB i totally agree with what u say. I was actually thinking the same thing. Don't they think it's strange for Phelp to win all those races and broke all those records. IS HE TOO DOING DRUG? Why not focus on him. Bolt ran three races Phelp swan 8 and won allllllllll. HMMMMMPPPPHHHH. PPL ARE JUST TO HYPOCRITICAL. AMERICANS ESPECIALLY. When it's not in there favour it has to be that the athlete is taking drugs etc. Come on America, just face it, this was not ur yr. You had ur turn already let some other country enjoy this moment. STILL WAITING TO HEAR THE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT PHELPS PERFORMANCES. I THINK THE PRESIDENT IOC SHOULD RESIGN BECAUSE HE TOO WAS NOT ACTING IN THE SPIRIT OF THE OLYMPICS...WHAT A HYPOCRITE.