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Usain Bolt Says 2016 Will Be His Last OlympicsThe Jamaican's sprint legacy is already unsurpassed.

Usain Bolt expects that the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro will be his last Olympics, and he hopes to sweep the 100, 200, and the 4 x 100-meter relay for a third consecutive Games.

As quoted by Britain's Metro.co website, Bolt told reporters in Rome, where he’ll run a 100 on Thursday, “I feel I have four more years in the sport. I am looking forward to the next Olympics and doing something that has never been done before. I want to show you can be the best year in, year out, and I aim to enjoy this period as much as I possibly can.”

Bolt has frequently expressed his interest in embellishing his athletic legacy, and anything he accomplishes up to and including the Rio Games will just add more dimension and stature to a sprinting career that, by many measures, surpasses any that came before it.

The tall Jamaican is, above all, the only man ever to win the 100 and 200 in successive Olympics, in Beijing in 2008 and London in 2012. He’s also the only runner to have set world records in the 100 and the 200 in the same Olympics, his 9.69 and 19.30 in 2008. And he’s also the only person to have done so in the same world championships, with a 9.58 and 19.19 in Berlin in 2009. Plus, he’s been on world-record-setting Jamaican 4 x 100 relays at the 2008 Olympics, 2011 world championships, and 2012 Olympics.

Bolt has been the world record holder in the 100 for five years now. In the last 90 years, only Jim Hines, who set a record of 9.95 seconds at altitude in 1968 that lasted until Calvin Smith’s 9.93 in 1983, had the global best for a longer period. Of course, Hines was effectively out of track after 1968, while Bolt has been the premier 100-meter runner since he set his first world record of 9.72 in New York in 2008, prior to the Beijing Games.

As he covets his third set of Olympic golds in 2016, Bolt, 26, is already the only man to have won the Olympic 200 twice.  Only one other man, Carl Lewis in 1984 and 1988, has won the Olympic 100 twice, and his second gold came only after Canada’s Ben Johnson was disqualified for steroid use.

This summer in Moscow is where Bolt can separate himself from other great world championships sprinters. With 200-meter wins in 2009 and 2011, he’s currently one of three men to have earned gold in that event at the world championships twice; the others are Calvin Smith (1983 and 1987) and Michael Johnson (1991 and 1995).

The world championships 100-meter gold is just about the only important measure by which Bolt may ultimately fall short of the top rung of dash history. Because of his false start in Daegu in 2011, he has just one such medal, from Berlin in 2009. Maurice Greene has three, from 1997, 1999, and 2001.  Carl Lewis has an even more impressive three, because his came in 1983, 1987, and 1991, when the world championships were a quadrennial, not biennial, event.

Sift through all of these statistics and plaudits, and what remains clear is that Bolt has been indisputably the #1 performer and the world record holder in both the 100 and 200 for five years. In the volatile world of sprinting, no other man in recorded history can make such a claim.

Rio and more Olympic history is still far in the future. Bolt’s immediate task is taking on American Justin Gatlin in Rome tomorrow. Gatlin’s got some longevity of his own. He was the 2004 Olympic 100-meter gold medalist and 2005 world champion in the 100 and 200 before serving a four-year ban for a positive drug test. In 2012, at age 30, he somewhat improbably came back and won a bronze medal in London by running the 100 in 9.79.

In 2013, Gatlin has a wind-aided 9.88 and a “legal” 9.91 to his credit, while Bolt, who has competed in the Caribbean, has merely run a 10.09. Bolt affirms that Gatlin “has proven this season he’s getting into great shape but I don’t worry about other athletes, only myself. One-off runs are not the main thing for me. I’m just worried about doing my best at the championships.”





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