The 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics will be the final time track and field fans get to see Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt in action during the Games.
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Given the significant media appeal of the world’s fastest man, it was perhaps to be expected that the news conference would be far from ordinary. “I go out and compete and wow the crowd and entertain people”.
The six-time Olympic gold medallist is chasing a third straight clean sweep of the 100m, 200m and 4x100m events at the Rio Games before he hangs up his boots but admitted on Monday during Team Jamaica’s press conference that he still gets pre-race jitters.
Bolt takes to the track Saturday for the early rounds of the 100 meters.
“I think it might be a little but hard”, said Bolt, who has never bettered the world record of 19.19sec he set in 2009.
He confirmed it would be his last Olympic Games and has made bettering his 200m world record of 19.19 seconds a top target, although he admits it wilI be hard. “That’s what people come out and see”. He admits that he has can not guarantee if the 100m showdown will be clean in a year which has yet again seen athletics rocked by doping with Russian Federation kicked out of the sport and Rio. “I was like, ‘It was okay.’ He was like, ‘That’s one of the worst races you’ve ever run.’ It was like, What?”
He won the 100 metres, 200 and the 4×100-metre relay gold medals in Beijing 2008, and the same three at London 2012. Two things. First, that Bolt believes the drug problems that have cast a thick cloud over his sport are thinning, and could even evaporate. Bolt, who said in February he would retire from athletics after the 2017 World Championships, confirmed this would be his last Olympics.
“I’ve done enough. I’ve proven myself over and over again, this is the last one”. [They said] they were like just trying to make the headline seem very… just trying to make it seem like you’re going to shock the world and I said okay cool.
“I really want it”, he said of breaking the record. At least we think that’s what it was. We have to go through a rough time before we get to the good times. I always wanted to run sub-19.
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Medals apart, Bolt is also eyeing a world record in the 200m dash. For the 100m it’s never really that stressful. ‘Regaining credibility in terms of the doping and the corruption that’s taken place is not going to happen in Rio or by the end of this year. In the interview he said, “I never try to predict times, I avoid that because you never know”.
