MONTEGO BAY, St James — Legendary American track and field coach Brooks Johnson says that the exploits of Jamaican sprint superstar Usain Bolt is helping to change people’s perception of the limit of the human body to run faster.

Bolt, the double World Record holder in the 100m (9.58 seconds) and the 200m (19.19), Brooks said has helped to redefine expectations and also to discount the use of performance enhancers in the sport of athletics.

“The beautiful thing about Bolt is that he can inspire people in other events to do what he did in his events, to totally change the landscape, to totally change the perception of what is the limit or close to the limit of human performance and that is what you see,” Johnson told a group of international journalists following a training session of his group of athletes at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in Orlando Florida recently.

Bolt’s exploits over the last three years or so, argues Johnson, had forced his opponents to run faster as well, saying “Tyson Gay would not be running 9.6 unless Bolt runs 9.50-odd; we would still be wallowing in 9.76”.

Johnson, 76, who also coaches American Justin Gatlin, said, too much time was being wasted worrying about athletes who used drugs to make them perform better. “Every one is talking about drugs. I don’t worry about drugs, we don’t have them here… the only thing a drug person can do is show you where a clean person will ultimately go,” he said.

“I remember coaching Steve Williams who ran (a then) World Record 9.9 seconds, now ordinary people run that. Back then that was an extraordinary time,” he said.

The father of two teenaged boys said the thing to do was use the times set by athletes who used drugs to foretell what clean athletes would do in the future. “I recall when guys were running 9.8 (seconds) and people were thinking you had to be dirty to run that time, now it is ordinary. So the question is how do you shrink time down, how do you do today what mediocre people are going to do tomorrow,” said the the maker of world beaters at sprints.

Talent he said was not necessarily “the most critical thing” in running fast. “People with less talent than say Steve Williams ended up running much faster than he did, people less talented than the guys who were running 9.8 (seconds) or whatever dirty are running it clean, so I don’t worry about the drugs, people get too hung up on it, that’s an excuse, it is a cop out because nobody knows the limits of human experience,” asserted Johnson.

One of the things that keeps him in the sport even at his ripe old age, is his curiosity as “I want to find out where that limit is and we haven’t even come close yet”.

Johnson said Gatlin, who ran 9.77 seconds in Doha in May 2006 to equal the then World Record held by Jamaica’s Asafa Powell as well as winning the Olympic 100m gold in Athens, Greece on 2004 and the sprint double at the World Championships in Helsinki a year later before failing a drugs test in 2006, can run faster than he ever did before.

“So if you ask me if Gatlin can get back to that time, the answer is yes because he don’t have to be that talented to do that,” noted Johnson.

To get back there, however, he said Gatlin will have to work harder than ever before.

“He has to get the interior muscles in shape which is difficult to do for sprinters as they don’t like to do the work necessary to get the interior muscles in shape. He is a big muscled guy and the surface muscles get in shape the quickest and for a guy as talented as he is, they can make him go pretty fast, but it is interior muscles that provide the ultimate power, (while) the surface muscles allow him to run fast,” said the American Johnson.

Johnson told the group that in early March, Gatlin “warmed up in 20.3 (seconds in the 200m) at about 80 per cent so I know he can run 20 seconds flat now, but for him to run 19.30 he is going to have to get the big interior muscles in shape”.

Johnson, the US coach of the year for 2010, said he never brought up the issue of drugs with Gatlin. “I never brought it up with him. I tell you why; we are more interested in character, the inner stuff. Anybody can make a mistake or not.”

It was a chance meeting with Gatlin, he said, that helped him make up his mind in coaching the athlete. “When he was on top, I saw him with his mother and father and the respect that he had for them and how he treated them… he showed an inner appreciation, an inner value which is what we want… and so we never talked about the other stuff,” ended Johnson.

Gatlin, coached then by Jamaican Trevor Graham, served a four-year ban from track and field for testing positive for a banned substance in 2006.