This was the easy one.
Usain Bolt’s quest to stay perfect at three Olympics remained alive Thursday night as the world’s fastest man cruised to a gold in his best event – the 200m – to win his eighth gold medal in eight Olympic races and his second so far in Rio. Before Sunday, no one had ever won three-straight running events at an Olympics. Now, Bolt has done it twice and will attempt to put a cherry on the top of his eight-year odyssey with a final gold in the 4×100 relay.
A semi-anticipated showdown with Canada’s Andre De Grasse, who either delighted or disgusted Bolt with his all-out performance in the semifinals (the one that led to some smiles, chit-chat and possible Usain annoyance) never materialized as Bolt took the lead at the 70-meter mark and never looked back. He cruised the final 40 meters to beat the promising Canadian by 0.24 seconds – a greater margin than Bolt’s win in London (0.12 seconds) but less than his historic sprint in Beijing (0.66 seconds). A quarter-second sounds small. It wasn’t.
While the 100 gets most of the attention, the 200 has always been Bolt’s best race. He has more room to make up for his deliberate start, uses those long strides to run down the guys he lets believe – for an instant – that they might have a chance and runs the turn better than anyone else has before.
So it’s eight down, one to go. Despite being a heavy favorite in the relay, Bolt’s dream of perfection is mostly out of his hands. With a clean race, the Jamaicans will cruise to another gold, giving Bolt three back-to-back-to-backs in Rio. But there’s always the very-real possibility of a fluky end to history with a bad relay exchange.
Bolt’s time was pedestrian by his standards – more than 0.40 seconds slower than his winning times in Beijing and London. Turns out there are two folks who can slow down Usain Bolt: Mother Nature and Father Time.
With the Rio skies opening minutes before the Jamaican sprint star took the track, the biggest question of the night – would Bolt be able to break his unfathomable 19.19 world record – became moot. The wet track wasn’t world-record material.
And though Bolt was dominant there was more huffing and puffing down the stretch that we’ve ever seen from him, which is to say this time around he actually looked like he’d run a race rather than went out for a Sunday morning jog.
It’s another amazing feat feels seems so ordinary it’s been taken for granted. We won’t be fully appreciate it until years down the road, when Usain Bolt is nothing but a lightning-fast memory and his mythic times are still the ones to beat.
foxsports.com
