It's not that Usain Bolt breaks records.

It's the records he breaks and the way he breaks them.

In the short span of two years, Bolt has done a decade's worth of restructuring to track and field's record book. He has made himself a candidate for The Associated Press' Athlete of the Decade by making people rethink what's possible in one of the most basic measures of athleticism: how fast a human can get from Point A to Point B.

"His whole life as an athlete has been punctuated by greatness," says Bolt's coach, Glen Mills, who prefers to let others determine Bolt's place in history but knows exactly what he's working with. "Usain Bolt _ he's a phenomenal, phenomenal athlete."

In the 100-meter dash at the Beijing Olympics, Bolt broke the record despite hot-dogging it across the line for the final 30 meters. A year later, as if to prove he could play the leading role with a greater sense of gravitas, he broke it again at world championships with a full-on effort _ and by .11 seconds, the biggest margin since electronic timing was introduced in the 1970s.

In the Olympic 200-meter dash, he broke a record most people thought was unbreakable _ a mark that had not even been threatened in 12 years. A year later, Bolt broke that record again, also by .11.

The current marks are 9.59 seconds in the 100 and 19.19 seconds in the 200. Not that anyone should get too comfortable with those, the way they did with Michael Johnson's 19.32 in the 200 or the 9.7-somethings in the 100 that took nearly a decade to wipe out.

The free-spirited 23-year-old from Trelawny, Jamaica, is simply different from those who came before him. He is puncturing long-held beliefs in track _ most notably, that records must be broken in small increments over long periods of time and he's too tall to excel as a sprinter.

"He's a freak of nature, to be 6-foot-5-inches tall, and be a world-class sprinter," Johnson says. "He's not the first person to be 6-5. But he's the first anyone's seen who's that tall and coordinated at the front end of a race."

Bolt blasted holes in the long-held idea that a sprinter's winning formula in the 100 must come from creating momentum via downforce by driving their feet into the ground over the first 30 meters.

His goal in a 100 is merely to stay even through those critical 30 meters while he's gaining speed after unfurling his lanky frame from the blocks. Then, he uses his massive stride _ he needs 41 steps, compared to 43 or 44 for his average opponent _ to pull away.