Usain Bolt is fast not just because he can run fast. He does run very fast, but that’s half the story. He is fast because he can run fast longer. To understand this, you need to understand the distribution of speed in a typical 100m race.
Winning a sprint is all about reaching your top speed quickest while maintaining the top speed longest. Bolt ran 100m in 9.58 s, this means his speed was 10.438 meters/second. That’s the average speed, which doesn’t give the complete picture. When any runner sprints, the sprinter accelerates from 0 to his/her top speed, maintains that speed and then decelerates at the end of the run. The top speed for any sprinter is obviously higher than the average speed. In Bolt’s case, his top speed was 12.195 meters/second. This itself is not extraordinary for Olympic level sprinters. What’s extraordinary about Bolt is that he maintained it for a full 30 meters. Most sprinters cannot maintain their top speed for more than 10 meters. Bolt is not extraordinarily faster than other Olympic level sprinters. He is fast for a longer duration.
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That’s why you see in most of his races it seems like he accelerates in the last 40 m and then does a sort of victory dance in the last 20m. His acceleration is an illusion. He isn’t accelerating; the others are decelerating. Right around the 50m mark, everyone reaches their top speed, including Bolt. Around the 60m mark, everyone else slows down while Bolt keeps going. Right around the 80m mark, Bolt realizes that everyone else has dropped behind and he starts slowing down. It is possible that he can continue at the same pace for longer than 80m, but he doesn’t really need to.
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