Usain Bolt has never run a mile, according to his agent

Usain Bolt, the fastest man in the universe, has never run a mile.

At least that’s the claim his agent Ricky Simms makes in an article in The New Yorker, out Monday, that puts some research into a question the running community has contemplated for years and that’s never been definitively answered.

The title of the article, by journalist Charles Bethea, is premised simply: "How Fast Would Usain Bolt Run the Mile?"

It’s a good question, and we don’t really know the answer.

But Bethea’s article is interesting not just for the question it poses, but for the way some people have tried to answer it.

As it turns out, lots of people don’t very much believe in Bolt.

Bolt has previously run 200 meters in a world-record 19.19 seconds. There are 1,609.34 meters in a mile. This is not actually possible, but with a little cross-multiplying, we can pro-rate that to a 154-second mile. That’d be a mile in a time of 2:34.

The human body can’t actually do this, obviously. It is beyond the realm of what man can achieve. But to figure out how quickly Bolt could get around a track for a full mile, you’ve got to figure out how much he’d slow down and how aerobically fit he is.

Some people think not very much, apparently.

From Bethea, summing up an online message board conversation about this very question, in which people suggested (apparently seriously) that it might take Bolt a full six minutes to run a mile. (Others thought he could do it in 3:55):

The prevailing wisdom on the thread was summed up best by a visitor using the handle "idiots," who commented last July, "Are you guys insane??? One of the world’s best junior 400m runners and possibly the greatest 100m/200m runner ever and you think his mile is the same as any random high school kid running track? You really think because he sprints he has no aerobic fitness at all?"

I know very little about running, other than that it’s hard and I’m not very good at it. But Bolt is in reasonably good physical condition.

Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Training for short-distance running is doubtlessly much different than training for even a middling distance like one mile. And there's a lot of science behind this question, which The New Yorker digs up:

"Speed over short distances does not automatically guarantee relative speed over long distances," Ross Tucker, a professor of exercise physiology at the University of the Free State, in South Africa, told me. "Mainly because the system used to produce energy sent to muscles is quite different. What a one-hundred- or two-hundred-meter sprinter relies on is incapable of meeting his demands over a mile. By definition, the training a short-distance sprinter does is in polar opposition to that of a middle-distance runner. One-hundred-meter speed translates pretty well up to four hundred meters. But after that there is a large change."

My best guess is that Bolt could do a mile in something like 5:00 and not have that hard a time doing it. I base this on Bolt being something beyond a world-class athlete, so good as to barely be human. He could figure it out. The idea that Bolt could be merely ordinary in any kind of running event stretches my credulity too far.

What say you? Let’s vote on this, and let's assume Bolt takes good care of himself ahead of his attempt but doesn't do any extraordinary pre-mile training.