RIO DE JANEIRO—Usain Bolt sauntered onto the track, stretched out his arms and waved his hands, signaling for more applause.
He knew exactly how this night was going to go.
The sprinter-turned-showman’s swan song in the Olympic 100 meters Sunday night was a no-doubter — a pedestrian-by-his-standards 9.81-second sprint down the straightaway, but not so slow that he couldn’t take time to point at his own chest with his thumb a step before he crossed the finish line.
“It was brilliant,” Bolt said. “I didn’t go so fast but I’m so happy I won. I told you guys I was going to do it.”
He won his record-setting third straight title in track’s featured event and his seventh Olympic gold.
He has already swept aside pretty much every sprinter who had any claim on being the greatest.
So, on a muggy night in Rio, Bolt took aim at Michael Phelps and the Olympics themselves, shoving the swimmer and all his 23 medals to the background and making this official: The Bolt Games have begun.
“I told you guys I wanted to set myself apart from everybody else,” Bolt said. “This is the Olympics that I have to do it at.”
