Usain Bolt lay waste the competition in the 100-meters finals of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and set off a celebration in the heart and being of every pulse-possessing Jamaican and in the soul of everyone who loves a display of transcendent athletic prowess.

The 21-year-old served his guests the really heady stuff:  a sideward glance searching for his virtually non-existent challengers, a deliberately slowed pace and a chest slap close to the end of his world record-setting tear. All of them as potent as straight up shots of overproof rum. The party was on.

But the green-eyed specter of envy sulks in the fringes of every victory party. It works the crowd, tapping the shoulders and pulling the sleeves of invited guests, plying its bilious offering with a candy coat of jest or “constructive” criticism. Bob Costas of NBC chose to show up at our party in his Grinch-green cloak of righteous indignation. In his self-appointed role of scold and general counsel for the “dissed” of the world, he wagged his finger and declared Bolt’s actions disrespectful to the competition, the spirit of the Olympics, Costas’s dog, his cat and his gold fish.

Mr. Costas, we know how you feel and what you are about. You witnessed the seismic upending of the power balance in the theater of international sprinting, and it knocked your world off axis and bruised your soul because it was accomplished by neutralizing the heretofore dominant US sprinters. So in response, you took the low road, discounting the worth of Bolt’s achievement in a fashion designed to make you appear to be taking the high road. Your duplicity came to shape as a stand for some higher principle, when in fact you were simply throwing a tantrum because things didn’t go the US way.

Bob, get a grip. Bolt, like many young, enormously talented, competitive athletes at the top of their game, behaves this way simply because he is all of the above. It is a part of who they are, and they are entitled, by dint of their youth, a momentary lapse into a state of graceless foolishness. It’s not as if anyone has to tell you this; you have spent a great deal of your professional life around athletes.

Remember Mohammed “Cassius Clay” Ali, he of the loud mouth and flashing fists? He showed very little regard for the conventions and proprieties of good sportsmanship, at least in the eyes of the old guard who didn’t like the boast and bluster with which he heralded his supremacy in the fight world. In their eyes, he was decidedly disrespectful of the sport when he was beating up nice guys like Floyd Patterson and mouthing off about it. The guy even resorted to name calling. Today everybody looks back and recognizes his antics as just a part of his endearing personality which, for a long while, was the rejuvenator of “the beautiful art.”

In the period of their dominance, the sight of US sprinters in their cavern-dark shades and their muscle-flexing self-absorbed swagger was enough to engender caustic sentiments in my own vinegar heart. They were winning consistently, Jamaica was just challenging for the most part. Their unveiled conceit and egotism made them, in my mind, undeserving of success. So, I would whine about their arrogance, their air of entitlement and their imperious bearing as being unsportsmanlike (read disrespectful). Of course if my slavish loyalty to the Jamaican sprinters had not been distorting my view, I would have recognized that it was mostly theater, just their way of putting on their game face. Of course, now that I know that they “they don’t got game,” their game faces don’t bother me as much. Our sprinters have come to ascendancy, and I can afford to be more accommodating in my view of things.    

Mr. Costas could arrive at this expansive, tolerant state of mind too. Maybe the US will abandon, at least in part, the conventional wisdom of discounting runners considered too tall for the sprints. I am sure with a population of 300 million, they will be able to find a few 7-footers who could cover the 100-meters in, say, 38 strides, and the turn over rate to do it in record time. Just remember though Bob, Jamaica was already challenging when we had a population of less than 2 million, and somewhere in the hills of Trelawny and in the mean streets of Waterhouse, there will be some kid running, really fast, toward 2012, 2016, 2020 and beyond. There will always be an occasion for you and others of your ilk to break out your sour-apples green suit for our celebrations.

- Brenton Wan