Dead heat, it turned out.
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Powell, who ran the first leg for Jamaica, said: “It was never in doubt”.
Now, he’s the greatest, equal on nine Olympic athletics gold medals with Lewis and Finnish distance great Paavo Nurmi.
Bolt said: “I’m just happy to have done what I came here to do”.
“A lot of people come out to see what I’m going to do today, tomorrow and it’s fun for them”, he said.
“I’m going to miss the crowd”.
When Usain Bolt crosses the finish line and starts pounding his chest, it resonates with the public around the world.
“I have to make a new bucket list now”. That may be part of the reason he’s beloved worldwide (more so than in the US, where his Q Score is a modest 20). Canada earned the bronze after U.S. were disqualified for having the first baton exchange happen outisde the takeover zone.
If Carter is confirmed as a drugs cheat, it would present the devastating possibility of all four men in that team losing their gold medal. The U.S. women brought it home in 41.02 seconds, and lead-off runner Tianna Bartoletta was already waiting for Bowie for a wild embrace to celebrate the second-fastest time in history behind the world record that Felix and Co. set in winning gold at the London Games.
Klay Thompson scored 22 points for the Americans, who will play Serbia for their third consecutive Olympic title.
It’s not as if the Americans didn’t have the plan and the know-how to defeat Bolt and the Jamaicans. “This has made me hungry for the world championships next year”. The U.S. being out meant that Canada was now free to claim that particular medal with a time of 37.64. Well, that and he came from humble beginnings to in turn humble American sprinters. “It’s the pressure of trying to beat the Jamaicans”.
The 32-year-old Cheruiyot adds the Olympic title to two world championships in the 5,000 and one in the 10,000. “I tell him, if you’re not in it for the long run with that girl, you leave her alone”. Jamaica now run tings, as they say on the island.
“She got ahead but then I thought, “She’s not moving”. I think it’s a terrible call, terrible”.
Since he electrified the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing with his opening flourish of a 100m in a world record time of 9.69sec, Bolt has been at the epicentre of the Olympics’ centrepiece sport, and he is not just a hard but an impossible act to follow. It’s like we have this dark cloud over us that we can’t shake.
Perhaps not very, as she went out after three failures at 4.70 metres. “To be DQed, it sucks”.
So Bolt seeks a seat among the transformative immortals, a debate a tier above the more humdrum one here about who best rides the Rio Games as its reigning athlete. And while he may not close things out with 23 golds, the number Michael Phelps left Rio with earlier this week, it’s hard to argue there is anybody more successful or electric _ or important to his sport, and the Olympics themselves. It shows that Team USA is soft on drugs …
The most uplifting relay story belonged to the US women, who dropped the baton in Thursday morning’s preliminaries but were given a reprieve when meet officials ruled Allyson Felix had been bumped before the botched exchange. They confessed that they practiced just twice before Friday’s race. They did, but ended up in the dreaded lane 1. Jamaica’s Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce closed fast but not almost enough. It was still the fourth fastest time in history. “The adversity yesterday made us even more determined and we kept fighting the whole way through”, said Felix.
– Klay Thompson scored 22 points and the USA men’s basketball team advanced to the gold-medal game by beating Spain 82-76. Jenn Suhr, who won silver in 2008 and gold in 2012, has been sick for more than a week and was questionable whether she’d even compete.
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“As soon as I got the baton, I knew I was going to win this one”. I threw up twice out there. “I’m getting old”, he told reporters after clocking 19.78. I’m just proud of myself. You don’t know what can happen.
