Bolt hits ‘greatest’ lane

RIO DE JANEIRO: Nobody is catching up with Usain Bolt at the moment, but age is certainly making a play for it. The Jamaican has begun looking over his shoulder, over at some invisible lane on the blue track at the Rio Olympic Stadium here. Maybe it is somewhere within the Lane 6 that he ran in here to win the 200m.
It wasn't the prettiest of races, not the ones we have come to associate with Bolt, the ones that he automatically makes them the almost happy exhibitions of acceleration and power; short but everlasting.All that was missing on Thursday. You could see the strain on the final straight, you could sense that we could sense it too. “I ran hard around the turn. My legs decided as I came off the corner that I wasn't going to go any faster. On the straight, my body didn't respond. I'm getting old,” he said.
Yet, it was a funny sight. Here was the rest of the field headed towards a photo-finish of their own, and our man in question a good yard or few ahead, all by himself, like he has been since he burst upon the scene eight years ago. But he wasn't smiling. To borrow a Phelpsian analogy from the Amercian swimmer's 200m butterfly win earlier in the Games, Bolt seemed “like he wasn't just moving,” despite all the surge and power to his second gold here. The immediate celebration at the tape gave us a peep on how he felt. Slapping his thighs almost in frustration, it was more of a man disappointed at himself than winning it anyway, by a yard that always seems like a mile. Then he realised where he was, remembered he is Bolt. He was back to being the darling of the stadium. “I don't need to prove anything else,” he reasoned later, “What else can I do to prove to the world I am the greatest?” Someone asked him about goodbyes from 200m and the Olympics. He shot straight. “You just stress me out, I want to say so. I think this is the last one. I am trying to be one of the greatest. Be among (Muhammad) Ali and Pele. I hope after these Games I will be in that bracket.”
Earlier, Bolt was seen adjusting his starting blocks on the warm-up track. Two-and-a-half steps for the bent front leg, his left and three and a half steps for the right, the propeller.
Then, as the introductions came on, he was dancing the samba to a tune in his head, smiling more, looking more at ease than at the 100m three days ago. Back then he had complained about the short turnaround times. “I don't know who decided that. It was silly. We had only half an hour by the time we got done with the semifinals, I have never been so tired as I did in the 100m this time. It is because of this, we won't see faster races,” he had said, promising too that more world records were to come in the future.