Physicists calculated Usain Bolt's potential 100m WR had he not celebrated early at '08 Olympics

Usain Bolt cruised to the men’s 100-metre title at the 2008 Olympics. Like, seriously.

While the Jamaican icon would later have to fight off stiff competition from Yohan Blake and Justin Gatlin later on in his career, there was absolutely nobody who could touch him that summer in Beijing.

Having nabbed the world record from his compatriot Asafa Powell earlier in the year with a blistering time of 9.72 seconds in New York, Bolt then went one better on his way to glory in China.

That’s because Bolt won his first individual Olympic gold medal with a mind-boggling time of 9.69 seconds despite multiple key factors seemingly going against his hopes of bettering the world record.

No, we’re not talking about the opposition because Bolt was miles upon miles ahead of silver medallist Richard Thompson, but rather the circumstances that were affecting him personally.

For starters, post-race images showed that Bolt’s laces had come untied by the time that he crossed the line and lest we forget the infamous story about him chowing down on chicken nuggets.

According to NBC Sports, Bolt wrote in one of his autobiographies: “Honestly, I ate nothing else in all my time out in China except chicken nuggets.

“They were the only food I could properly trust which wouldn’t affect my stomach. On arriving at the [pre-Olympic] training camp I’d tried a local Chinese meal, which wasn’t like the ones we we eat in the West, and my body didn’t react well.

“So, knowing I could rely on nuggets, I made up my mind that was all I would eat. And eat them I did, for breakfast, lunch and dinner, washed down with bottled water.”

However, the key detail that we’re most interested in is the fact that Bolt actually started celebrating fully 20 metres before