Usain Bolt won't be satisfied unless Rio Olympics yield three gold medals
RIO DE JANEIRO – Usain Bolt likes symmetry, he says it keeps him peaceful. It applies to the design of his simple yet tasteful property in Jamaica and even more so to his list of career accomplishments.
Having won the men’s 100 meters on Sunday night, Bolt admitted that he will consider these Olympics a failure if he doesn’t repeat his three-gold hauls from Beijing and London by racking up wins in the 200 and the 4x100 relay.
“Of course,” Bolt said, when asked if it would be a personal disappointment if he went home from Rio with two or, whisper it now, only one gold. “I came here to win three golds. I came to prove myself again as one of the greats. That’s how my goal is. If by any chance I fail, of course I’m going to be sad and not feel accomplished.”
Bolt has announced this will be his last Olympics and, calm and chilled as he is, he cherishes his place in track history. He dominated Sunday’s final to win in a time of 9.81 seconds, far slower than his world record of 9.58, but the Jamaican does not measure his career by statistics, but by the stash of gold he has collected over the years.
“It has been a great record,” Bolt said, referring to both his world mark and the Olympic record of 9.69 he set in Beijing. “You never know what the possibilities of who will come along in the future. For me my name is on the gold medals and that is all I am focusing on. I am ready to go, I am excited about this one and that one for the rest of the Olympics.”
Bolt stays in a room of his own at the Athletes’ Village by mingles regularly with the rest of the Jamaican team, some of whom have noticed an extra steely focus to him this time around.
“Oh yeah, he wants it,” sprinter Nickel Ashmeade said. “He wants it all, all them of them again one more time. He wants it to finish in the perfect way.”
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