For many, the first time they saw Usain Bolt, he was high-kicking over the finishing line at the Birds Nest Stadium in Beijing on Saturday, pounding his chest and recording the almost indecently quick time of 9.69sec in claiming his first Olympic gold medal in a world-record time.

Go back 12 months and few people at all had heard of him. Last summer, the men fighting for the 100 metres gold medal were expected to be Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell, while Derrick Atkins, the emerging talent from the Bahamas, split the pair at the world championships in Osaka.

Bolt had been in Osaka too, winning a silver medal behind Gay in the 200 metres and another in the 4 x 100 metres relay. People acknowledged Bolt was a talent, but as a 200 metres man, not someone with out-and-out speed. Until just over a year ago, Bolt had not run in a senior 100 metres race.

Yet 12 months on, Bolt, the Jamaican who will be 22 on Thursday, looks a good thing to become the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984 to win the sprint double at the Olympics. And who would bet against him breaking Michael Johnson’s 200 metres world record of 19.32sec set 12 years ago at the Atlanta Games?

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In his younger days, cricket was Bolt's first love and he was, unsurprisingly, a promising fast bowler. Indeed it was his cricket coach that advised him to give athletics a try. He started off as a 200 metres and 400 metres runner, making waves at national championships and events around the Caribbean as early as 2001.

In 2002, the world junior championships were in Kingston, Jamaica, and the 15-year-old Bolt was already 6ft 5in. He stood out physically and won the 200 metres in a time of 20.61sec, becoming the youngest world junior champion ever.

By 2003, he had caught the eye of David Powell, then The Times athletics correspondent, who tipped him before the World Championships in Paris. He wrote: “Usain Bolt, from Jamaica, 17 only on Thursday, has a glimpse of a medal at 200 metres. Bolt has run quicker this season than Konstadinos Kederes, the Olympic, world and European champion, from Greece, Frankie Fredericks, the Namibian who is still a contender at 35, and all three Britons, Christian Malcolm, Darren Campbell and Julian Golding.”

He did not win a medal in Paris, but the following year, he turned professional under the guidance of his coach, Fitz Coleman. He broke the world junior 200 metres record with a run of 19.93sec, but he was eliminated in the early round at the Athens Olympics after suffering a leg injury.

However, in 2005, having joined up with Glen Mills, as coach, he ran 19.99sec at Crystal Palace then 19.88 in Lausanne. In 2007, he broke the 36-year-old Jamaican record of Don Quarrie with a run of 19.75. It was after that that he made his debut in the 100 metres, running 10.03sec in Rethymno, Crete.

It is only in the past four months that Bolt has come to prominance in the shorter distance. On May 3, at an invitational meeting in Jamaica, Bolt ran 9.76sec, aided by a tailwind of 1.8 metres per seconds, the second-fastest legal performance in history.

On May 31, Bolt went faster, breaking the 100 metres world record with a run of 9.72sec in New York. He went faster still on Saturday and most think that if it had not been for his premature celebration, he could have gone under 9.6sec.

But the list of men who have done the sprint double at an Olympic Games is a short one, featuring only eight names. More importantly, only three – Bobby Joe Morrow, Valeri Borzov and Lewis – have done it since the Second World War. The opportunity is there for Bolt, at 21, to become a true great.