2016 Rio Olympics: Usain Bolt can make claims as greatest of all time

Rio de Janeiro >> In a sort of victory lap before the victory, Usain Bolt held up his left arm, his index finger extended into a wet night, as he walked slowly clockwise from a tunnel entrance, around the Olympic Stadium curve to his blocks in Lane 6 and the start of the Olympic Games 200-meter final.

Such audacity would have been laughable from any other sprinter. Then again there never has been any other sprinter like Bolt. Besides, the result Thursday night was never in doubt, even the most remote of chances for an upset vanquished before the race even hit the homestretch.

Bolt once again reduced the rest the field at a major championships to spectators, racing to a 19.78 victory in his last individual Olympic final.

The Jamaican’s latest triumph made him the first person to sweep the Olympic 100 and 200 gold medals in three Games. Never mind that no person has even done the double twice. Or that only two people, East Germany’s Barbel Wockel and Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown, have even won an Olympic 200 title twice. Or that Thursday he became the first person to win the same event at seven consecutive Olympics or World Championships.

Bolt looks to add a third consecutive 4x100 Olympic title with Jamaica Friday night to his resume. A victory would be Bolt’s ninth gold medal, equaling Carl Lewis of the U.S. and Paavo Nurmi, the Finnish distance running great of the early 20th century.

Thursday night Bolt wasn’t running after Lewis or Nurmi or even himself around the stadium’s blue oval. He was chasing a pair ghosts, one who has always loomed large over the Olympics, the other still towering over the country nearly 40 years after he played his last match.

“I am trying to be one the greatest,” Bolt said. “Be among (Muhammad) Ali and Pele. I hope after these Games I will be in that bracket.”

On the track Bolt is simply the most dominant sprinter of all-time. In the 200 Bolt has run faster than Lewis, the 1984 Olympic 200 champion, 19 times. With Thursday’s race, Bolt has dipped under 20 seconds a record 32 times, the same number of sub-20 clockings as Lewis and Michael Johnson, the event’s previous world record holder, combined.

Off the track, like Ali and Pele, he is transcendent, challenged perhaps only by soccer’s Lionel Messi for the title of world’s most popular active athlete. Bolt, with his global rock star status, has been nothing short of a savior for a sport that at times seems determined to self destruct.

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Bolt had hoped to lower his 200 world record one last time Thursday, telling his younger rivals, such as Canada’s Andre de Grasse before the race “I don’t allow youngsters to beat me.”

Despite an unusually strong start and an even stronger tu, Bolt realized one last record wasn’t in him.

“I ran hard around the tu,” he said. “On the straight, my body didn’t respond. I’m getting old.

“My legs just didn’t feel fresh. I’m not 26 anymore. I’m not 21. I wanted it, but my body just didn’t take me.”

De Grasse, the 2015 NCAA 100 and 200 champion from USC, is Bolt’s most likely heir apparent when the Jamaican retires after next year’s World Championships in London. De Grasse finished in 20.02 to add a 200 silver medal to go with his 100 bronze. France’s Christophe Lemaitre took the bronze at 20.12.

“I was hoping to give him more a challenge,” de Grasse said of Bolt, who was sitting next him.

“Young kids,” Bolt said shaking his head laughing.

De Grasse said he was excited about the challenge up living up to the billing as the sport’s next great sprinter.

The title of greatest was already settled.

“I don’t need to prove anything else,” Bolt said. “What else can I do to prove to the world I am the greatest?”

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