Usain Bolt's Top Speed and Five Fastest 200m Performances

Usain Bolt's fastest recorded speed is 44.72 km/h — 27.79 mph — reached roughly 68 metres into the 100m final at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. No human has been measured faster in an official race. Below are the verified speed figures and his five fastest legal 200m performances, with the wind conditions and all-time rankings for each.

Key figures

  • Top speed: 44.72 km/h — 27.79 mph · 12.42 m/s · reached at ~68m of the Berlin 2009 100m final
  • Average speed over 100m: 37.58 km/h — 23.35 mph, across the 9.58s world record
  • Average speed over 200m: 37.52 km/h — 23.31 mph, across the 19.19s world record
  • Top speed as running pace: 1:21 per km — 2:10 per mile — held for roughly two seconds

Usain Bolt's five fastest legal 200m performances

  1. 1. 19.19s — Berlin 2009 World Championships

    World record · fastest 200m ever run

    Run into a headwind of -0.3 m/s, two days after his 9.58s 100m. He split roughly 9.92 for the first 100m and 9.27 for the second — the fastest closing 100m ever recorded in a 200m.

  2. 2. 19.30s — Beijing 2008 Olympic final

    #3 all-time · wind -0.9 m/s

    Michael Johnson's 19.32 had stood for 12 years. Bolt beat it by two hundredths while running into a headwind, and won by 0.66 seconds — the largest margin in an Olympic 200m final since 1968.

  3. 3. 19.32s — London 2012 Olympic final

    #5 all-time · wind +0.4 m/s

    Exactly equalled Johnson's old world record, and made Bolt the first man to successfully defend the Olympic 200m title. Jamaica took all three medals.

  4. 4. 19.40s — Daegu 2011 World Championships

    #7 all-time · wind +0.8 m/s

    Three days after being disqualified from the 100m final for a false start, he ran his slowest reaction time in years — and still won by 0.30 seconds.

  5. 5. 19.55s — Beijing 2015 World Championships

    #23 all-time · wind -0.1 m/s

    His fourth consecutive world title in the event, won by 0.19 seconds over Justin Gatlin while visibly easing down over the final metres.

How the 44.72 km/h figure was measured

The number comes from the biomechanical analysis of the Berlin 2009 100m final, where laser and high-speed camera systems recorded athlete velocity across 10-metre segments. Bolt's peak instantaneous velocity of 12.42 m/s occurred in the 60–80m segment. It is a peak, not a sustained speed: he was above 43 km/h for roughly the middle third of the race and decelerating by the finish line, like every sprinter.

What that speed means for a normal runner

A typical recreational 5K runner moves at around 10 to 11 km/h. Bolt at peak was travelling roughly four times faster. Put in pace terms most runners use day to day, 44.72 km/h is 1:21 per kilometre, or 2:10 per mile — a pace no human has ever held for more than about 20 metres. His 200m world record average of 37.52 km/h works out to 1:36 per kilometre, sustained for 19 seconds.

Why 19.19 has stood since 2009

Bolt's 19.19 remains the only sub-19.30 performance in history that was not his own. The record survived Noah Lyles' 19.31 in 2022 and Letsile Tebogo's 19.46 Olympic title in 2024. Bolt holds four of the ten fastest 200m times ever run.

Frequently asked

What is Usain Bolt's top speed?

Usain Bolt reached 44.72 km/h (27.79 mph, or 12.42 m/s) during the 100m final at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. The peak came roughly 68 metres into the race and is the fastest speed ever recorded for a human in official competition.

How fast is Usain Bolt in mph?

His peak speed was 27.79 mph. His average speed across the full 9.58s 100m world record was 23.35 mph, and across the 19.19s 200m world record it was 23.31 mph.

What is Usain Bolt's 200m world record?

Bolt ran 19.19 seconds in the 200m final at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, into a headwind of -0.3 m/s. It has stood as the world record ever since.

Has anyone run faster than 19.19 in the 200m?

No. The closest anyone else has come is Noah Lyles at 19.31 in 2022, which equals Michael Johnson's 1996 mark. Bolt owns four of the ten fastest 200m performances in history.

Could Usain Bolt hold that speed for a marathon?

No — peak sprint speed and endurance pace are different physiological systems. At 44.72 km/h a marathon would take 56 minutes; the actual world record is 2:00:35. Bolt's top speed is roughly four times the pace of an average recreational 5K runner.

Sources

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