Canada’s Andre De Grasse timed at 9.91 seconds for the bronze medal.
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Usain Bolt said he is confident of signing off as an Olympic “immortal” after his 100m win at the Rio Games left him two races from an unprecedented Treble Treble.
Van Niekerk watched the last Olympics at home on television but had a straightforward message for anyone who suggested his remarkable progress in the last four years was down to doping. He is now well on his way to a whole new level of greatness.
“I’m really happy”, Bolt told BBC Sport.
“Stay tuned, two more to go”, he said Sunday.
Bolt admitted his performance in the final was far from flawless and blamed a timetable he branded “ridiculous” and “stupid” for his failure to go quicker, with the short-turnaround after the semi-final leaving little time to recover and go again.
He had maintained ahead of the Games that he was in much better shape than a year ago. “It was shocking. I guess some people are more vocal than others”.
Running out of lane five, Bolt had the second-slowest reaction time and was slowly away from the starting blocks, but once he got into his stride, the race was all over.
And the gold was what he came for.
I wasn’t happy with the schedule and hopefully we’ll take it back to the normal schedule. “It wasn’t flawless execution, but I’m proud of myself”. “I wanted to set myself apart from everybody else and this is the Olympics and this is the place to do it”.
It also leaves Bolt on track to complete an incredible “triple-triple” of clinching 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay titles for a third consecutive Olympics. “Immortal”, Usain Bolt said after winning the men’s 100m in Rio.
Yohan Blake finished fourth in 9.93 but was grateful for the result after a couple years of injury setbacks.
By the end, he was clear enough to start the chest pump a few metres from the imaginary tape.
Bolt is so often dubbed the saviour of athletics in his battle with Gatlin, who has become the personification, rightly or wrongly, of all that is wrong with the sport.
By contrast, 29-year-old Jamaican Bolt smiled and waved to a crowd that eagerly complied with his gestures requesting cheers or, just before the starter’s gun, silence. That performance not only won van Niekerk gold by an incredibly large margin over the previous two Olympic champions, including bronze medalist LaShawn Merritt of the USA, it obliterated the world record set by legendary American sprinter Michael Johnson in 1999.
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“But they don’t know me, they don’t know Justin”. I’m a competitor, he’s a competitor and he has pushed me to be the athlete that I am today.
