Is Bolt on track for a perfect ending?

LONDON — Will there be anybody like Usain Bolt again? Not if you ask the man himself. “I doubt it,” he replied, flashing that toothy, impish grin. “Nobody can be the next Usain Bolt.”

It was a relief, quite frankly, to see him in London at all.

Bolt had alarmed the world three weeks ago by pulling out of the Jamaican trials with a minor hamstring tear, an injury that threatened briefly to sabotage the poetry of his third and final Olympics. The thought seemed too dire to contemplate. No Bolt, no party. But he swaggered into his Tower Bridge hotel in London with an ebullience to suggest he had been playing us all along.

Not only did he claim that he had “no worries” about the offending hamstring, he even made the bracing statement that he felt ready to break his own 200m world record at next month’s Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Exasperated by arguments that he was past his peak, Bolt suggested that he could still defy all doubters by running faster than the 19.19 seconds he managed in Berlin in 2009.

“This is where history is going to be made,” he said. “I’m looking forward to putting on a show for the entire world to see.”

In its way, this was a vintage Bolt performance, with grandiose predictions, endearing self-regard and even a less-than-subtle dig at his chief rival over 100m, Justin Gatlin.

Bolt, who beat the American by one-hundredth of a second at the World Championships in Beijing last year, wasted no chance to crow at Gatlin’s expense as he prepared for another defining duel in Brazil.

Asked if he was psychologically the stronger of the two, Bolt replied: “I’m definitely tougher. Gatlin was just not ready, he was not used to being chased. He hadn’t had a tough competitor. Finally he did, with me.”

Ironically, Bolt could find himself in the same position in Rio in the 200m.

For eight years, he has looked unassailable in the longer sprint, but before last Friday’s win in the Anniversary Games in London in a time of 19.89sec, Bolt had not officially recorded a time in the event this year.

That the time is slower than American LaShawn Merritt’s 19.74 this year, and a far cry from the world record of 19.19 that he set in 2009, are likely to keep him honest.

Still, what is likely to drive Bolt on is his craving for the perfect ending in Rio.

He is looking for the cinematic bookend that would confirm him as the first person ever to win three successive Olympic 100m titles. Fail, and his compatriot Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, champion in the women’s 100m in Beijing and London, could beat him to it.

He remains desperate, too, for a “treble-treble” of Olympic sprint glory, an unprecedented feat that would satisfy the filmmakers out in Brazil, who are following his every move for a future biopic.

It is eloquent testimony to Bolt’s supreme status that while no other runner has taken gold over 100m, 200m and the 4x100m relay at the same major championship more than once, he has done so five times (the 2008 and 2013 Olympics, and the 2009, 2011 and 2015 World Championships).

“This is where I need to make a big mark,” he said. “I’ve had a slight setback, but I’m happy with the progress I’m making. I know, once the competition starts, that I’ll be ready.”

So blinkered is Bolt this summer, he regards the spectre of Russian doping, illustrated by the absence of the country’s track and field stars from Rio, as a mere frippery.

“I don’t stress about these things,” he explained. “I always leave it up to the big heads to make the decision.

“For me it’s neither here nor there. It’s really a sideshow, and if you get caught up in it, you lose focus on the task at hand. So, I don’t watch or keep a note.”

Lest this sounds a little louche or blase on Bolt’s part, he did agree that the punishment of the Russians would serve as a powerful deterrent. As he stretched out his left arm to reveal a small adhesive bandage over the mark left by his latest drug test, he lamented the “really bad” doping problem that has disfigured his sport.

“It’s a good message to show that if you cheat or you go against the rules, then we’re going to take serious action,” he said. “This ban will scare a lot of people, or send a strong message that we are serious, that we want a clean sport.”

Bolt has never failed a test, but the mistakes of others mean that even he has not stayed immune to the fall-out of the ever-proliferating drugs scandal. In June, a re-examination of athletes’ B-samples from the Beijing Olympics of 2008 found that Nesta Carter, Bolt’s former relay partner, had tested positive for traces of methylhexanamine, a banned stimulant.

While he could yet find himself stripped of the gold that he and Carter won together at the Bird’s Nest eight years ago, Bolt refused to despair.

“It would be disappointing, but rules are rules,” he shrugged. “What can I do?”

The only solution, he recognises, to soothe the anguish across athletics is to offer a reminder in Rio of what he does better than anybody there has ever been. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH