Smiling Usain Bolt

Submission 19,773

Part of a series on 2016 Summer Olympics. [View Related Entries]

About

Smiling Usain Bolt is a photoshop meme and reaction image based on a photograph of Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt grinning at a camera while leading the 100-meter dash race at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janiero, Brazil.

Origin

On August 14th, 2016, Usain Bolt won the gold medal in the men's 100-meters sprint finals with a time of 9.81 seconds, becoming the first track athlete in Olympic history to win three consecutive gold medals in a single discipline. Bolt's performance at the event was particularly noteworthy for beating his rival and American sprinter Justin Gatlin with an impressive upsurge in the last 40 meters of the dash. As Bolt crossed the finish line, Getty photographer Cameron Spencer photographed the athlete smiling at the camera (shown below).

That day, Twitter user @suss2hyphens^[1] tweeted the photograph, describing it as "the opposite" of the Crying Michael Jordan meme. Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 6,400 likes and 5,100 retweets.

Spread

Several minutes later, Twitter user @russbengston^[2] reposted the photo with a "bae come over" joke (shown below, left). That same evening, Twitter user @a7xweeman^[4] tweeted the picture along with a reference to the “*Record scratch* *Freeze frame*“ movie cliché. Over the next day, the tweet received upwards of 47,000 likes and 35,600 retweets.

Also on August 14th, Twitter user @sporker_^[3] posted a photoshopped version of the image showing Bolt running from "deadlines," "sleep" and "responsibilities," garnering more than 19,000 retweets and 15,000 likes in 24 hours(shown below).

In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the photoshop meme, including The Observer,^[5] The Daily Dot,^[6] The Huffington Post,^[7] The Independent^[8] and The Daily Mail.^[9]