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Usain Bolt accepts the crowds applause.
Usain Bolt accepts the crowds applause. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian
Usain Bolt accepts the crowds applause. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

Usain Bolt's Olympic goodbye the perfect ending for sprinting's greatest

This article is more than 7 years old
in Rio de Janeiro
Barney Ronay in Rio de Janeiro

Usain Bolt has confirmed himself the greatest, most compelling sprint athlete of the modern Games by completing his third straight Olympic sprint double

And with that, he’s gone. Predictably Usain Bolt chose the only really workable way to bow out at the Rio Olympic Stadium – the greatest, most compelling sprint athlete the modern Games have seen completing his third straight Olympic sprint double in his last individual race.

Before tonight Bolt already had more solo sprint Olympic golds than any other man, five to Carl Lewis’s three. Now he has twice as many as the next guy. Better to burn out than fade away, and here Bolt simply turned on the thrusters and consumed the rest of the final field at the midway point and, powering on to the line right out on his own, a man as ever running an entirely different race.

At the end Bolt did something a little different, eschewing the customary haring run to the corners. Here he stopped and fell to his knees, arms spread in a kind of supplication, a man sealing in the moment for the last time. This was a goodbye of a more tender shade than usual, a valedictory stroll capped with an Elvis-level squealing hysteria as he stopped at the line and performed the dreaded to-di-world mime for the final time.

Like so much at these Games this was an oddly rushed, oddly soft-pedalled individual Olympic finale for such a colossally potent figure in the sport’s modern history. These Games have leant on Bolt, track and field’s lone member of the outright sporting overclass, and a very obvious one-man life-raft in troubled times for this bruised and bloated circus.

And yet with seven minutes to go before the appearance of this prime commercial property in his final race, the stadium was in the middle of a shot put medal ceremony. Twenty minutes earlier the women’s 400m hurdles final, a major event in itself, was taking place – a jumble of clanging interests at the very end of meandering evening.

Finally to huge, shrill, belated roars the 200m men appeared, trotting around the track to their opening bend. Bolt did what he does, languidly working the crowd, hammily cool. He raised a single hand toward a knot of Jamaicans, the flashing phones tracking his progress.

As the camera lingered Bolt posed and swaggered a little, for form’s sake. He looked nervous too, which is always intriguing. Bolt says this is the only event that makes him genuinely anxious. Perhaps this is to do with his early years, when 200m was his default race, a distance that so obviously suits his huge dormant power. The start is minimised. That rhythm of the final twenty metres of the hundred progressed to its full extension. For all the headline event-glamour of the 100m, the 200 is Bolt’s real home.

This is borne out by the hysterical riches of Bolt’s list of times. He still has has thirteen of the top twenty 200 metres ever run, stunning domination of one of athletics’ prime gigs. To put this into context Andre de Grasse took an Olympic silver medal here with the 325th fastest 200m time ever run. Little wonder there is now and then time and inclination for a little laugh and a joke in the final few metres.

Bolt had said he needed to run “the perfect race” to take his record here. He’s 30 next week. Even that probably wouldn’t have been enough. Still he reeled in the field with the usual ease, rolling himself up to his full height and powered away in the straight. Bolt’s superpower is his basic confusion of the laws of scale. Tall sprinters have appeared before. But nobody has managed to make it work. Nobody else could run a bend like Bolt, or muddle his way to a good enough start.

There is a central confusion of capacity and size here, a tall man who runs like a short man. Bolt has the super fast-twitch muscles, but he has them with a longer stride. Yohann Blake used to wonder at times if it was physically possible for him to beat his training partner.

It is off the track as much as anything else the sport will feel the void. When he’s gone there will be no replacement, just a competing roster of normal scale humans beings. The Bolt persona above all will be missed; commercial catnip, but also an intriguing thing in itself. There is undoubtedly a real Bolt in there somewhere, some private part of himself that has remained discrete throughout the Bolt Supremacy, just as there is some clever misdirection in the party boy persona, the Swedish women’s handball team schtick, the much-trumpeted chicken nuggets. The casual airs are an act of intimidation, a racing tactic. The playfulness with De Grasse in the semi-finals was a part of this, an invitation to blink first.

Usain Bolt, ever the crowd pleaser, takes selfies with his fans. Photograph: Tom Jenkins for the Guardian

Another odd thing: other sprinters like Bolt. No one resents him, or shows irritation at his theatrics. It isn’t hard to see why. For a start Bolt makes them money. Tyson Gay has said his own revenues increased steadily as soon as Bolt started beating him, so profound was Bolt’s effect on the entire sport. The wealth has been shared, if not the medals.

Beyond this the age of Bolt has been a triumph for Jamaica, a track and field-obsessed nation of three million that has churned out sprinters ever since the days of Arthur Wint, 400m champ at the 1948 Olympics. Bolt first hardened his competitive will running in front of 30,000 at the Jamaican boys championships.

Here he ran his last as an Olympic sprint finalist, although another world championships will follow. Some have even suggested that retirement will quickly pall, that his value is simply too great, his racing will too strong to depart even on a high. That remains to be seen. But in Rio this felt like the greatest of solo goodbyes for the greatest, and most fondly compelling of athletes.

RioRun

This article was amended on 19 August 2016 to correct the spelling of Arthur Wint’s name, from Arthur Whint as an earlier version said.

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