We’re all still head over heels in love with Usain
NOBODY wanted to see it end the way it did, with Usain Bolt face down on the track with only his relay colleagues and a chap with a wheelchair for company. The sprinters he had come here to beat, in pursuit of what he hoped would be his 20th global title, had long since finished.
But the organisers of London 2017 had already arranged for the Jamaican superstar to receive a special award — a framed piece of lane 7 from the 2012 Olympics track, in which he won both his 100m and 200m golds — on the final evening of the championships and in the circumstances it was just as well that they did.
Bolt was back on his feet last night, closing a most eventful 10 days of track and field with one last lap of honour before strolling into retirement, his race run. ‘You guys have given me a lot of love,’ he told the capacity crowd.
It was a fitting way to send off an athlete who has no equal in the history of the sport.
Ever the showman, Bolt did not disappoint, striking the ‘lightning’ pose to the delight of his audience before leaving it to the next generation to illuminate a sport too often clouded in scandal and controversy these past few years.
It had been a far from perfect send-off. Not when Justin Gatlin and Christian Coleman beat him in the race for the 100m title he had long claimed as his own and his second attempt to secure one last gold medal concluded in agonising failure.
In hindsight, perhaps he should have hung up those spikes 12 months earlier. Perhaps dominating the sprints for a third successive Olympic Games would have been a better way to go.
But credit Bolt, at least, for attempting one last hurrah, and credit him too for still showing up when he clearly knew he was not in shape.
After losing the 100m he admitted he was in no fit state to run the 200m and that actually said it all.
At the end of a season blighted by back problems and further dis- rupted by the tragedy of losing a dear friend, Bolt clearly gambled on racing his way into form.
It was a gamble he lost but even then he revealed himself to be a gracious loser. Even then he credited Gatlin for delivering on the night, however unpalatable his support of a convicted drugs cheat might have seemed.
In that sense he was a true champion to the last. But now he is gone. Now track and field searches for someone who even comes close to combining that explosive talent with such charisma. It is a hopeless search.