As befits the king of sprinting and the biggest global star at the Rio Olympics, Usain Bolt of Jamaica held up his index finger, signaling that he was No. 1, during introductions Sunday night as the smitten crowd chanted his name, reports The New York Times.
Then he proved it again, winning the 100 meters in 9.81 seconds, securing his place as the greatest sprinter of all time and becoming the only man or woman to win the 100 three times and at consecutive Olympics.
His main rival, Justin Gatlin of the United States, the 2004 Olympic champion who later served a suspension for doping and was booed on Sunday, took the silver medal in 9.89 seconds. Andre de Grasse of Canada won the bronze in 9.91.
As Bolt ran down Gatlin in the final meters, he pounded his chest. He then blew kisses to the crowd and carried a toy Olympic mascot around the track, giving it away as a souvenir. Finally, he struck his signature pose, known as To Di World, cocking an elbow and pointing his fingers toward the sky, as if launching an arrow or a lightning bolt.
He is also favored to win a third straight gold medal at 200 meters and yet another as the most vital member of Jamaica’s 4×100-meter relay team.
Even an athlete as great as Bolt, though, can be upstaged on rare occasions. That happened Sunday when Wayde Van Niekerk of South Africa set a world record in winning the 400 meters in 43.03 seconds, shattering Michael Johnson’s 17-year old record of 43.18.
Running on the outside in lane 8, where he could not see his competitors, Niekerk astonishingly shaved more than four-tenths of a second from his previous career best of 43.48 and more than a second from his season’s fastest race before the Olympic final.
Fairly or unfairly, given the tainted state of track and field due to doping, that performance may bring as much skepticism as celebration.
For Bolt, Sunday’s victory carried both a sense of celebration and farewell. He will turn 30 next Sunday as the Rio Olympics end. He has said repeatedly that these will be his final Games.
He plans to retire next year after the world track and field championships in London, with one transcendent career goal remaining: to take his world record of 19.19 seconds at 200 meters below the 19-second barrier.
“This has got to be the most universal event other than the long jump,” David Wallechinsky, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, said of Bolt’s victory in the 100 on Sunday. “Everyone’s tried it at least once in their lives. To be the best in the Olympics three times in something that everyone has done at least once is incredible.”
When Bolt crossed the line Sunday, it was not with the same astonishment as that night eight years ago at the Beijing Games, when he was new to the public and the 100 and he finished in 9.69 seconds, easing up and celebrating before the tape but still breaking his own world record. How fast he could have run that night, we will never know.
Nor did Sunday’s performance match the wonder of the 9.58 that Bolt ran a year later to set the current 100 record at the 2009 world track and field championships in Berlin. As with his victory at the 2012 London Games in 9.63 seconds, winning for Bolt is now more about career achievement and historical standing and dominance at the biggest moments than mere startling speed.
He stacks wins as if they were poker chips. Since he became an otherworldly figure with his performances in 2008, Bolt has won 69 of 74 races. His only truly important defeat came with his elimination on a false start in the 100 at the 2011 world track and field championships in Daegu, South Korea.
Bolt has raced little this season, and in recent years, he has become vulnerable to nagging injuries in his back that radiate down the muscles of his legs.
