There are athletes, there are sportspersons and then there are outliers. But what of those that confound the outliers? Which bracket do they go into? Is there a sample space for them to fit into or do they remain as projected forces or the more odd-sounding, freaks of nature?

Usain St. Leo Bolt is in more ways than one, an interesting science experiment, to be studied and tested for bionic implants, to be monitored and gawked at. Or maybe not. Was Bolt merely a pointer sent to us, two decades earlier than he should have, because of a disruption in the time-space continuum?

Here was a man who took your video game cheat codes and laughed at them, and took your nitrous boosts and ate them for breakfast. And he did it, not with the underlying tension and the wound-up tightness of a pugilist, but with the swagger and smile of a Reggae beat-boxer.

Each time the shotgun went off, you would feel a sense of ‘what-next’ with Bolt at the start line. Kicking off with a languid stride, taking off Concorde-style, finishing up in a furious ball of a lime and green, akin to an Energiser bunny on an adrenaline overdose. The Flash comparisons, the superhuman and the Lightning Bolt analogies aside, Bolt is as human as they come.

He is also cleaner than most of his contemporaries.

Arriving at a time when athletics was plagued by a series of high-profile doping scandals which saw Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin stripped of their 100 metre world records, and Marion Jones return three gold medals, Bolt infused new life into an event, on the verge of disgrace and generated huge amounts of spectator interest the world over.

A total of 125 men have ran sub-10 second times in the history of the 100 metres. A total of 878 times below 10 seconds have been set, out of which Bolt accounts for 49, the most of any on that list.

Here’s the catch: After Bolt, all six of the fastest men on the planet have been caught in doping-related scandals at one point or the other. One would have to scroll down all the way to Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago and Christian Coleman of the USA, with identical bests of 9.82 seconds to find the next dope-free culprits.

Drug cheats have been so rampant at the Olympics and especially in the 100 metres, that Bolt and Donovan Bailey in 1996 aside, one would have to go all the way back to Allen Wells in 1980 to find a champion who has never been convicted of anything stimulant-related.

Against the backdrop of this, it is worth remembering over and over that, Bolt has never failed a drug test. Carl Lewis, the holder of the 1984 and the 1988 100 metre gold medals has often been sore about Bolt’s achievements but has himself admitted to “one of hundreds” of American athletes who escaped bans for testing positive for banned substances in the 80’s and the 90’s.

Lewis, who won the gold medal in 1988 by default after Canada’s Ben Johnson was found to be on stimulants, had himself failed three drug tests in the same Olympic tests but had been let go.

The difference between Bolt’s fastest time of 9.58 seconds and the next fastest men, Tyson Gay and Yohan Blake with 9.69 is 0.11 seconds. Extend your search to the next 0.11 seconds and one can see that all men with 9.8 or lower – Justin Gatlin, Asafa Powell, Maurice Greene, Nesta Carter, Steve Mullings – have all been linked to or caught with performance-enhancing substances at some point in their careers.

A hack by Fancy Bears, a Russian organisation, showed how deep seated the role of doping is in the athletics world, revealed how 66 athletes make the use of Therapeutic Use Exemptions (TUE) for the consumption of prohibited substances.

The Nesta Carter case robbed Bolt of a triple triple – the 100, 200 and the 4X100 relay golds – and Bolt’s relay gold from Beijing 2008 was taken away.

The sprints world, by far the most prominent of the athletic disciplines affected by the ugly shadow of doping, has Bolt and his resurgence to partially thank for the resurgence of the sport.

The lax-nature of Jamaica’s anti-doping program has sometimes been cited for Bolt’s breakaway success but with periodic tests at all international meets for all winners and the guilty verdicts for his compatriots, the 30-year-old has stayed clean.

Perhaps only time will tell whether there will be another such as Bolt, a runaway success on the track and a clean one off it. Till then, celebrate the Jamaican for what he is – a remarkable and un-doped champion.