Usain Bolt (JAM) of Jamaica gestures after his team won the gold.
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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.
That’s the only question left for Usain Bolt, after he capped his third straight three-gold medal Olympics performance Friday night in Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, silver for Jamaica allowed Veronica Campbell-Brown to win a medal at a fifth Olympics dating back to the 2000 Sydney Games.
It was Bolt’s ninth Olympic gold in nine Olympic finals: a three-pack three-peat of the Olympic 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay.
“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. There was an upset as Vivian Cheruiyot powered past slumping favorite Almaz Ayana of Ethiopia and set an Olympic record of 14 minutes, 26.17 seconds.
And to paraphrase the great philosopher Bum Phillips, if Bolt isn’t in a class by himself, it surely must not take long to call the roll.
None of the members of the Japanese team has a sub-10 time for the 100, but their precision in the handovers gives them an advantage of teams that have faster athletes but inferior technique.
“We already did the victory lap and then when we talked to TV, they told us”, said Gay.
His uncanny dominance was juxtaposed on Friday in a race that appeared to further reveal the human vulnerability of Team USA, which was ruled to have passed the baton outside the zone on its first exchange (between Mike Rodgers and Justin Gatlin) and thus forfeited an initially apparent bronze.
This marked the ninth time since 1995 the US men have been disqualified or failed to get the baton around at Olympics or world championships.
The rivalry between the Jamaican and USA relay teams is one of the fiercest in all Olympic sports.
“When there aren’t other circumstances out of our control, we can kind of get the job done”, Gardner said later. I’m just proud of myself that I executed and got it done. Even though he’ll be just 33 when the Tokyo Games take place four years from now, he promises he won’t stick around for 2020 or entertain any second thoughts.
Still, he hadn’t been expecting such big things from the silver medalists.
“Japan probably surprised us a little bit”, de Grasse said. All the things track fans had seen before and all the things they’d loved. “But congrats to them as well”.
His ninth gold medal drew him level with Paavo Nurmi, the Finn who dominated distance running in the early 20th century, and American sprinter and long jumper Carl Lewis as the most successful Olympic track and field athletes.
“I’ve proven to the world that I’m the greatest and that’s what I came here for”, he said.
“I never said this was my last Olympics”, he said. “I felt good, but when I came into the straight, my body wouldn’t respond to me”.
Usain Bolt along with the Jamaican teammates after winning the 4x100m relay. No world record, but he still owns that one, too – 36.84 seconds, set four years ago at the London Games.
When Bolt’s on the track, everyone forgets.
Latynina has 18 medals overall.
Bolt, the most famous Jamaican since Bob Marley, has repeatedly declined to say what he will do after he hangs up his spikes.
The GB quartet of Richard Kilty, Harry Aikines-Aryeetey, James Ellington and Adam Gemili, who finished sixth, were promoted to fifth.
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Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
