As Yohan Blake aligns his spikes into the blocks, a lone bead of sweat rolls down his cheek, hanging from his chin before breaking off toward the pebbled surface of the steaming track. For a fleeting moment, time stands still as his eyes follow the falling droplet, glistening with the blinding reflections of a thousand cameras going off all at once. This is the Olympics, and the roar of the crowd is absolutely deafening.
It was an incredible feeling for Yohan to reach this moment he once only dreamed of, but he hadn’t done it alone. To his left, Usain’s eyes had closed in a meditative state. The two were raised in the same small village, and grew up enjoying the simple things in life such as a cool glass of water on a sweltering day, or fresh linens to sooth their weary bodies after a grueling afternoon of work. Yohan and Usain battled and bled together as they trained under the hot sun of their Jamaican homeland in preparation of this moment. As children, they would sit by the radio, listening intently as their favorite sprinters took the world by storm with their Olympic exploits. And afterwards they would pretend to be on the world stage themselves, racing from where the dirt path meets the cool grass of the meadow down into the orchard for the Olympic Gold. As they grew older, they loved each other as equals, but even as children there was something different about Usain; something remarkable that became evident to Yohan on a windy, summer day many years ago:
Looking back, Yohan remembered that it was indeed quite windy for a summer day….
A breeze coming inland from the sea whipped across their sweaty skin. Yohan was pleased, having beaten Usain once again as the two raced from where the dirt path met the cool grass down into the orchard like they had done so many times. After a race they would often collapse, out of breath, at the foot of the tallest cherry tree with their eyes bound shut from exasperation, feeling about for fallen fruit lying hidden in the grass. They quenched their thirst on the ripe cherries while laughing and joking as they composed their breath. But this time, Usain was still standing, looking toward the setting sun. He was lost in thought, Yohan could tell.
He turned to face Yohan, standing above him and extending a hand.
“Come wit me, bruddha”, he said, pulling Yohan from his rest under the shade of the large cherry tree. Side by side, they waded through vast meadow, surrounded by tall grasses rolling gently with the wind. The daylight faded in and out as clouds passed the sun.
“I am restless, my brother. I can’t help but feel theses winds are pushing us somewhere,” he murmured, combing his fingers through the tips of the swirling pasture.
“Blowing us towards something…incredible.”
The breeze had begun to pick up into a cool wind, whistling through the waving grass.
“Usain, we have proud families that we will one day carry on for. How can you be so restless?” Yohan replied, as the first droplets began to fall, riding an intense gust and stinging their skin. Yohan, squinting against the assailing elements, searched Usain’s face for an answer.
“I know there is more to life than trading for bananas, Yohan. I love Jamaica, but I cannot stay here! Do you not feel this way? Do you not want to see what the world is like on the other side of these ocean waters?!” Usain exclaimed, fiercely gesturing towards the sea where massive waves had begun to crash down upon the shore.
With a crack of thunder, the rain transformed into an icy downpour. Yohan turned his head upward to feel it fall upon his face and saw thick, dark clouds swirling in the sky, blotting out the last of the sun and shrouding the pasture in a veil of sudden darkness. A fierce gale suddenly battered the two with a torrent of frigid water, nearly knocking Yohan off his tired feet.
“We are a simple people! It would take something truly remarkable for us to leave this land!” Yohan yelled over the howling gusts, wiping the water from his eyes with a soaked sleeve.
“Then let us be great, me bruddha!” laughed Usain. “I know we can become the fastest in the world. Why not? Tell me why!? We can do it, and we can become like those we once listened to on the radio!” he roared over the bellowing wind.
The fishermen were tying their boats to the shore with thick ropes as massive tides of black water relentlessly smashed down, currents tugging the vessels against their harnesses upon recession into the darkness of the sea which had taken the lives from many of those dared venture out into the infinite depths. Yohan had grown up listening to tales of their terrible deaths.
“Enough, Usain. I cannot live a life of chance. How can I leave my family to chase a foolish dream!?” Yohan was screaming now, angry with Usain.
“Do not ask how. Instead, ask why. And I will show you,” calmly replied Usain, as he knelt down in his starting stance.
Yohan realized they were back standing where the dirt path met the cool grass, now a running river twisted with mud.
“Please, Usain. Let us return home. The storm grows stron-,”
“TAKE YOUR MARK, YOHAN,” erupted Usain. “One more…Please.”
There was a pleading tone in his voice. Yohan obliged, hesitantly setting down beside Usain. Their gaze turned to each other; where there had always been warmth and love, Usain’s eyes were forged with cold steel, an icy sharpness that shot a prickling sensation up Yohan’s spine.
Out at sea, a bolt of lightning struck, and they were off. Yohan was always the first off the line, boasting incredible acceleration, but this time he slipped into the mud, falling to his hands and scrambling to right himself. Churning his legs through the sticky mud, he was unable to get the traction he needed to surge ahead. A feeling of panic overcame him as he struggled against the muck. Unable to escape the sludge’s grasp as it pulled against his feet, he screamed in frustration as he lashed his tired legs against the ooze’s relentless grasp. He was helpless to overcome Usain, whose long, sprinting strides sliced through the slush like a hot knife. Asphyxiated by the elements, he finally stumbled, panting, into the orchard where Usain was awaiting him. Yohan wanted to congratulate him, but the words were choking him as tried desperately to breathe. Usain looked upward to the heavens.
“What is life without chance, Yohan? What is life, knowing exactly how you will live and die?”
Yohan was still breathless as the words echoed into his head.
“Why are we content to be what has become expected? Why can we not choose our own fate?”
Yohan staggered forward, still unable to find air, clawing desperately towards his friend.
“THERE IS TOO MUCH IN THIS WORLD TO REMAIN CONTENT WITH WHAT WE HAVE…”
Yohan couldn’t even force a cry for help. A smothering feeling overcame him as the rain covered his face and he heaved his lungs with desperation. A lone bolt of lightning fell in the distance behind Usain, splitting the sky and burning into Yohan’s eyes the dark outline of Usain’s silhouette against the sudden burst of light. The ensuing crack of thunder concussed Yohan into a deafness, silencing the screaming gusts and the percussion of rain. Hopelessly out of breath, and unable to see or hear, Yohan fell to his knees in disorientation, sinking slowly into the mud. There was nothing but silence. Rain poured while lightning and thunder blazed and cracked all around him, but he was unaware of it all as his dazed mind slowed into a calm tranquility:
There is life.
And there is love.
And nothing shall come between us and our destiny.
We were born upon this island, but we shall not die here.
Suddenly Yohan’s eyes flashed open. With a rattling gasp, he took huge, deep breaths, and his vision and hearing slowly returned. He was back in the meadow with the rain still assaulting his body and the winds swirling violently about. Usain was kneeling beside him with a hand on his shoulder, holding him upright.
“Please, Yohan. Let’s be great together.”
Yohan looked into Usain’s eyes and spoke,
“Together we will run until the wind stops blowing. Until the rain stops falling. Until the sun sets and we cannot take another step. And then we will run some more. Together, we shall run off this island.”
The clouds began to relent and the winds and rain slowed into a stall. The exposed sun was nearly set, but warmed their chilled bodies.
“I have something for us,” said Usain as he reached into his pocket, pulling out what appeared to be two grey tin lids attached to a bit of twine. “Medals,” he said, placing one them around Yohan’s neck. As Yohan raised the remaining tin lid over his Usain’s head, golden rays of the setting sun flashed between the clouds, reflecting sharply off Usain’s medal…
“YOHAN BLAKE, JAMAICA,” Called out the intercom, abruptly snapping Yohan out of his memories. They were sounding off the runners; the race was about to start!
But he was not ill-prepared. Years of training had built Yohan’s body into a force of nature. A combination of raw power and technique were the output of a machine, sculpted and fine-tuned from ages of excruciation.
Yohan’s breathing deepened, pulling huge swathes of oxygen into his anxiously awaiting lungs. His heart, powerful enough to crush granite with a single beat and then pump the pulverized sediment through his veins in the same stroke, sucks quarts of blood into its ventricles with a single expansion before forcefully expelling the oxygenated substance into the arteries that will direct it throughout his body. The hairs on Yohan’s neck slowly rise in unison as skin begins to tighten around his swelling muscles and the chain hanging loosely from his neck, a token from his family, begins to quiver; adrenaline is flowing now, and the screams of the crowd become slowly submersed into a distant, dampened flicker until all he can hear is the rhythmic percussion of his heart, still pumping, and beating, and pounding the sanguine fluid through every vessel in his body just as steadily as Yohan is able to breathe; in and out. In….and out.
Squinting his eyes, he peers across the shimmering surface exactly 100 meters ahead to his destination. 100 hundred meters bathed in illumination of the massive floodlights, and spectated by millions around the globe. 100 meters to give meaning to all he had worked for.
Below his fingers, he felt the track’s surface. He felt where the dirt path met the cool grass.
“We did it, Usain.”
It was time, as the speakers behind him bellowed out, “TAKE YOUR MARKS…”
Yohan’s body tensed like a coil.
“START!”
His massive legs exploded off the block like two hydraulic pistons; pumping with such force, driving deep into the earth with such immense magnitude, that the planet’s rotation was seemingly altered, if only but an inch. And with each stride, his arms swung forward with power and purpose like a great pendulum on an old grandfather clock counting down the precious few seconds he had remaining to overtake his compatriot. For Usain had begun to pull away from the pack, and for him there would be no looking back as he broke the world record in the Men’s 100 Meter. It was his destiny from the beginning, something Yohan knew better than anyone as he bowed his head forward to accept the Olympic Silver Medal being placed around his neck.
He turned to face Usain, but could not see him against the golden rays of the setting sun.