How many MPH was Usain Bolt going when he ran the 9.69 for the 100m?

Question

He ran that time for the 100m in the olympics and i was just wondering how fast exactly he was going.

Answer 1

They said he was going almost 30 mph at one point..wow

Answer 2

possibly over 30MPH I may do a calculation and come back here with it. It's important to not that calculating the time at 9.69 will be inaccurate because he did slow down towards the end of the line.

Answer 3

The announcer was not referring to his average speed over the 100 meters, but instead his top end speed.  This refers to the speed he was going the fastest during the race.  There is no way to know this right now, we will have to wait until experts go over the tapes and analyze his splits during the race and figure out his exact top end speed   Donovan Bailey has the fastest recorded one at 27.1.  Boldin (the announcer) was kind of exaggerating when he said 30mph, but maybe it will be around 28 or so.  If you take his average speed during the race it was 23.1, but of course this is much less than his fastest speed because he starts at 0mph at the start and has to get up to full speed.

Update: I saw on ESPN that early analysis has him going 29.2 mph at top speed.

Answer 4

His top speed would have been like 40-45 Miles an hour. Average speed around 35 Miles an hour

He is actually smart. He still has the 200 meters still to be run. So that's why he shut it off in the 100 meters. Otherwise he would have set even 9.4 seconds.

"I just ran the first 50 meters, then I looked around to make sure I was safe and I shut it off" - Usain Bolt

Answer 5

they said 30 mph

I did a quick calculation:

10.32/meters per second = about 23.09 miles per hour

That is ridiculous; however, his top speed was probably way more than that.

Answer 6

I guess over 28 mph. The question I ask is, was he running faster then Michael Johnsons 200m in Atlanta?

Answer 7

I've calculated that if his speed was averaged out (assuming that he could instantly run top speed from scratch) that he would have been running 25.42mph, however, you have to allow the time for accelerating, which ive not yet had the chance to work out.

So all my answer can be is, more than 25.42mph

Answer 8

the anouncer guesstimated 30mph

Answer 9

His top speed (according to his 10m splits) was 27.28mph.

For football fans: His 1st 40 yard time was 4.368. His best 40 time(at

any 40 yard stretch) was 2.998.

I based these the sportsscientists.com article. The first 40 time was

derived from his average acceleration.

Answer 10

Yeah from my calculations he ran about 95 mph, but I wasnt watching the race in HD.  Plus remember it is in Beijing so that adds 17 mph.  So total comes out to Usain Bolt running 143 mph.

Wow thats fast!