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Rio Olympics 2016: Usain Bolt’s influence on athletics

The gold medal, however, will suffice.

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I watched for as long as I could last night as he danced around and bid the crowd farewell upon completing his gold medal triple-triple with the 4×100.

RIO DE JANEIRO-Usain Bolt put the seal on a glittering Olympic career Friday with a blistering 4x100m relay victory that clinched sprint’s first ever “triple triple”.

“I am just relieved”. I never knew from the start that this was going to happen to me and now it has it’s a brilliant feeling. I look at it as accomplishment. Trinidad and Tobago were also disqualified. TV pictures showed Bromell stepping into Bolt’s lane in the run to the line. “My team came through for me tonight”. Canada defeated the hosts Brazil to win the bronze medal.

He combined with Asafa Powell, Yohan Blake and Nickel Ashmeade to lift gold in a time of 37.27 seconds, the BBC reports.

Gay was the last man to beat Bolt in a major championship final – in the 200 metres at the 2007 worlds in Osaka – and despite his disappointment at the disqualification he had nothing but praise for the Jamaican. Jamaica won the gold medal. “Everybody just appreciates what he’s done”. But before he left the track, his partners peeled off from the victory lap.

When Bolt roared to the finish line in the 200m final she told her 2,176 twitter followers: “This level of pride is unfathomable”.

With his 30th birthday tomorrow, Bolt should have a long second career ahead of him and a lot of people, from his sponsor Puma to Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness, want a say in his plans. “I’m going to stay up late and have fun”, he added, putting Rio’s famous party scene on high alert.

And how did he achieve greatness?

“I’ve accomplished what I wanted to in track and field”. I never thought that.

Friday’s triumph was potentially the most awkward, with Bolt’s gold medal hopes reliant on the performances of his team-mates. The tally could have been higher, too, had the US men’s 4×100 team not been disqualified after finishing third in the subsequent final. Running the second leg in the relay, Felix kept the USA up there with the mighty Jamaicans, before English Gardner and Tori Bowie brought the baton, tightly clenched in their hands, home for gold. Felix is the first women athlete to reach five golds.

He grabbed the baton almost even with the U.S. team, but pulled away easily in the homestretch to give Jamaica its third consecutive 4×100 gold.

“It’s more than words can exprss now”, said one excited fan.

In the pole vault, Ekaterini Stefanidi of Greece pipped USA’s Sandi Morris to gold after a tense contest.

Felix ran the second leg for the Americans, the same section as 100- and 200-meter gold medalist Thompson, and passed to Gardner, who ran a powerful curve to give her team the lead.

Apart from criticism in the United States, Lochte and three other swimmers with him face an International Olympic Committee disciplinary inquiry. “We didn’t expect to see them up there”.

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Having dubbed himself “the greatest”, he told the BBC: “I’m just happy to have done what I came here to do”. No way was Bolt going to let it slip, not in his final race, not with destiny beckoning at the tips of those golden feet. She finished tied for seventh. In an all-European final at the Maracana Stadium, the Germans defeated Sweden 2-1. Usain Bolt is the world’s number one.

Jamaica Usain Bolt Wins Gold In 4x100m Relay at Rio Olympics