beijing Usain Bolt loves the cameras, the cameras love Usain Bolt, and when they connected during his third victory lap of these Olympics, he smiled that infectious smile and raised three fingers.
As in: 3-for-3-for-3.
As in: three events, three gold medals, three world records.
Bolt capped his spectacular Summer Games by tearing through his portion of the 400-meter relay Friday night, setting up Jamaica’s victory in 37.10 seconds to break a 16-year-old world record.
It was the perfect way to end a weeklong coming-out party that began with a world record of 9.69 in the 100 meters Saturday, followed by a world record of 19.30 in the 200 meters Wednesday.
“The greatest Olympics ever,” Bolt called it.
Who could argue? Bolt joins quite a list: The only other men to win gold medals in the 100, 200 and the sprint relay at one Olympics were Carl Lewis in 1984, Bobby Morrow in 1956 and Jesse Owens in 1936. None of those greats set world records in either the 100 or 200, though, much less both.
“People can only dream of doing what he’s done. He’s basically cemented himself as a legend of track and field,” Bolt’s relay teammate Michael Frater said. “I don’t think any performance can top what he’s done here.”
If not for Michael Phelps, the Beijing Games would go down in history as the Bolt Games.
Impossible as it might have seemed after Phelps collected his Olympics-record eight golds in the pool, the 6-foot-5 sprinter managed to share top billing thanks to speed that stuns and charisma that gets people talking.
He won the 100 by 0.20, then the 200 by 0.66. The margin in the relay, 0.96 over second-place Trinidad and Tobago, was the biggest in that event at the Olympics since 1936. Japan was third.
“We simply couldn’t compete,” Trinidad and Tobago’s Marc Burns said.
The relay actually was close after Nesta Carter ran the first leg for Jamaica and Frater the second. Bolt changed that quickly, putting his team way out in front, even if he wasn’t running the leg he hoped.
“Usain wanted to start. He wanted to lay the hammer down from the start,” Frater said. “The coaches wanted him to run the third leg. We listened to the coaches.”
Good call.
After passing along the baton to anchor Asafa Powell — no small feat, if you ask the U.S. teams that bungled exchanges in qualifying a night earlier, or the Jamaican women, who did the same thing earlier Friday — Bolt pointed at Powell and yelled encouragement. Even as Bolt slowed in his lane, his work done, the other teams’ anchors couldn’t catch him for about 30 meters — that’s how big Jamaica’s lead was.
The Jamaicans shattered the old mark of 37.40, originally set by a U.S. team that included Lewis at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics, then matched by another American quartet in 1993.
Jamaica’s six overall gold medals in track and field are one more than the U.S. team, which got No. 5 from Bryan Clay in the decathlon Friday.
The only thing International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge had to worry about was whether the Jamaican was having too good a time. Instead of thanking Bolt, Rogge chastised him, saying the sprinter didn’t show enough respect for his opponents and engaged in too much “Look at me” hot-dogging.
Bolt shrugged off the criticism.
“The crowd loves it — they love when I put on a show for them,” Bolt said. “They come out and pay their money to see a good performance and also to see a personality.”
