Bolt’s record in Olympic finals: nine races, nine wins.
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Usain Bolt brought the curtain down on his Olympic career with a record-equalling ninth gold medal, anchoring Jamaica to relay glory in a perfectly scripted “triple-triple” finale.
The man who transcended track and became a world-class celebrity bid a blazing-fast farewell to the Rio de Janeiro Games and, he insists, the Olympics altogether Friday night with yet another anchor leg for the ages. Bolt, achoring the race like he always does, got Jamaica home in just 37.27 seconds.
After controversy nearly kept the United States women’s 4×100-meter relay team out of Friday’s final, the group instead was able to defend its Olympic title.
Japan’s quartet took a surprise silver in 37.60 seconds while the United States claimed bronze in 37.62.
While Asafa Powell, Yohan Blake, Nickel Ashmeade and Bolt won the final race of the day, the United States of America were able to celebrate a gold medal in the women’s 4x100m relay – long jump champion Tianna Bartoletta, Allyson Felix, English Gardner and Tori Bowie recording the second-fastest time in history, a scintillating 41.01 seconds.
After Friday night’s relay, he went back to the finish line, in Lane 4, and kissed the blue track.
“My team came through for me tonight”, Bolt said.
As magnificent as he is, it’s logically inconsistent to argue that Bolt is even the greatest track and field athlete in Olympic history.
“A great sprinter”, said Gay, who once upon a time was Bolt’s biggest challenger.
The men’s hammer final was won by Dilshod Nazarov – Tajikistan’s first Olympic gold medallist – while Matej Toth and Liu Hong were the respective champions in the men’s 50km and women’s 20km race walks.
The 6-foot-5 Bolt grew up running barefoot through the green fields of Trelawny, a rustic parish hidden deep in Jamaica’s so-called Cockpit Country known for producing two things: sugar and sprinters. He said it as though he expected this all along. For Bartoletta, it was the second gold in Rio, after winning the long jump too.
His world record in the 100m, 9.58 seconds?
Numbers-wise, Lewis has the more accomplished Olympic resume – 10 medals overall, the nine golds and one silver in the 200m in Seoul in 1988 – and don’t think Lewis doesn’t know so.
Canada’s Andre de Grasse, who won silver in the 200 meters and bronze in the 100, said his team had seen the Americans disqualified before, most recently at last year’s world championships. At the 1952 Helsinki Games, Zatopek, widely considered the most innovative if not best runner of the 20th century, won the 5000m, 10,000m and marathon – that marathon his first-ever. The Jamaican then stormed the Beijing Olympics with his first 100m, 200m, relay treble.
For his part, Bolt is “legend”, what he called himself after his three victories four years ago in London.
The U.S. team was disqualified – again.
Along with Bolt for his final trip down the track were Nickel Ashmeade, training partner Yohan Blake and the Jamaican elder statesman, former world-record holder Asafa Powell.
Jamaica’s woman’s 4×100 meter relay team did not do as well as the men’s unfortunately, with visibly poor baton changes slowing down the team. “We each have had a rocky road, kind of a different journey, a unique experience”, said Felix, who has eight medals total in her four Olympic appearances. “I’ve told him he should come back for 2020!”
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“I’m just happy that I’ve done what I came here to do”, he said after the race, joking there would have been grave consequences for his teammates if they had let him down.
