Lee Davy sends the fastest man in the world eight questions about life including what attracted him to PokerStars, how life feels in retirement and the potential of a football career in the Bundesliga.
Usain Bolt is a giant amongst midgets. A man who runs 100m faster than a canary dropping its load into the bottom of its cage. And I was going to meet him.
The world works in mysterious ways. A meeting with a man who makes lamp posts shake when he runs was never on my bucket list. A night out in New York was. But I wasn’t thinking about that when my son and I hopped on a plane bound for JFK en route to Nassau and a meeting with this monumental man.
I had 1:40hrs to pirouette through JFK airport. I was like Jason Bourne figuring out my passage through the throng. The Virginal ladies called me a worry wart. I sucked in my inner Bolt. I could make it. I didn’t. We ended up stranded on the runway for three hours. I missed my connection. I wouldn’t get a flight to Nassau for another two days.
A meeting with Bolt enters the underside of your elbow, flies to your mind and then settles in your gut. I only got the comedown. And then, as my son and I eventually got off the plane, he looked at me and said, “Never mind, Dad, we get to spend the day in New York.”
I felt like a ballet dancer crashing to the ground on opening night. Highlander may never die, but 7.5 billion people will never live. For the next two days, I wandered around New York with my boy, ticking off a bucket list item I never planned, and getting that rush I assumed would come from Bolt.
I asked these questions.
Via email.
The second best thing to being there myself, I suppose.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
