Usain Bolt eyes new 100m record at Crystal Palace

The world's fastest man, Usain Bolt, believes he isn't too far away from running the 100 metres in 9.5 seconds. The 6ft 5in Jamaican won the 100m gold medal in Beijing with a time of 9.69 seconds. In London for the Grand Prix at Crystal Palace this weekend, he told the Independent he can beat his own record if he makes a significant improvement on his "horrible" starts.

With the World Championships in Berlin in August approaching, this season hasn’t gone entirely to plan. Bolt has been hampered by a foot injury after he crashed his BMW at home in Jamaica in April, and believes his fitness is still only around 85 per cent.

"I need to do some work on my speed endurance," he said, "because I wasn't able to do much on that after my car accident. I had thorns in my foot, which meant I couldn't run round the bends, so that means my speed endurance is quite low. I could only do 80, 100 and 110m sprints instead of 200m. I lost about a month of training so I have a lot of catching up to do."

Bolt won gold in both the 100m and 200m at Beijing. Because of the speed endurance issue, he knows he will face a real challenge in the 200m in Berlin from the American Tyson Gay, but that in the 100m he could be on course to beat the world record.

He hasn't been beaten in the 100m since fellow Jamaican Asafa Powell won in Stockholm a year ago. In Paris last Friday, facing into the wind and rain on a track not designed for sprinters, Bolt started slowly but still romped home first in 9.79 seconds.

Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, calculated that he would have run 9.52 in the Olympic final had he not eased up and started prematurely celebrating his victory over the last 20 metres, and his charge thinks something like that is possible. "He's been right so far about what I can do," Bolt, still only 22, told the Independent, "so I think maybe 9.5-something is possible." ·