Bolt needed the help of his 4x100m relay teammates to win his last Olympic gold before retirement, but not as much as they needed his help to win the medal.
Advertisement
The U.S. finished the race third but endured yet another relay debacle – disqualified because leadoff runner Mike Rodgers passed the baton to Justin Gatlin outside the exchange zone.
Fresh from running his final 200m race at the Olympics – and unsurprisingly adding another gold medal to his bulging collection – Bolt was simply happy to have his name mentioned in the list.
The 6-foot-5 Bolt grew up running barefoot through the green fields of Trelawny, a rustic parish hidden deep in Jamaica’s so-called Cockpit Country known for producing two things: sugar and sprinters. “And they did exactly that, I had no work to do, just to run to the line”.
US were disqualified as the Americans’ first exchange between Mike Rodgers and Justin Gatlin was judged to have taken place outside the exchange zone.
Bolt, 29, has said repeatedly that this is his last Olympics even though he was almost as dominant in Rio as in the previous two Summer Games.
Breaking his silence, Lochte apologized Friday for his behavior surrounding an early-morning incident at a Rio de Janeiro gas station, saying he should have been more candid about how he described what happened after a night of partying with his teammates following the final swimming races.
Prior to Bolt, Jamaica had never won an Olympic gold medal in the event. That leaves Bolt with an unprecedented nine golds in nine career Olympic races, including victories in the 200 and 100 this week. She also won a silver in Rio in the 400 meters, the third silver of her career. It was only nearly single-handedly, though, as his three Olympic relay titles, two in world record times, always required the input of his fellow Jamaican speedsters. Canada found out in the middle of a television interview, and in the moment it was a sweet reversal of the Canadian DQ of four years ago for a lane violation, and perhaps a karmic reversal of the most honourable 50-kilometre racewalk bronze medal that Canada’s Evan Dunfee lost on appeal earlier in the day.
There were emotional scenes on Friday evening as Team GB’s women’s hockey stars denied Holland their third straight Olympic title.
While these achievements were notable, as occurred previously during the week, they were often drowned out by the commotion over a scandal involving four members of the USA swim team.
Since 1995, though, the Americans had failed to get the baton around or been disqualified eight times in sprint relays at the Olympics or world championships and calamity struck for a ninth time on Friday.
From there, the nine-times Olympic gold medallist was always going to win, exploding away from his rivals to cross the line in a sizzling time of 37.27sec.
The 58-year-old was part of the team that won the team jumping gold at London 2012 on his sixth Olympic appearance. He is truly one of the greatest athletes of our or any time. “It’s come true”, Bolt said. Bolt has said he will hang up his spikes after next year’s world championships in London.
Advertisement
With that he left the Olympic arena for the final time. Makenzie Fischer and Rachel Fattal each had two goals for the Americans, who stretched their win streak to 22 games and outscored their opponents 73-32 at Rio. “So, I’m happy. I have relief it’s over”.
