Usain Bolt grins way into 200m final as Gatlin, Blake miss qualification

SPRINT star Usain Bolt has shown a side we have never seen, taking aim at a young rival in his post 200m semi-final interview. WATCH THE RACE HERE!

Jamaica's Usain Bolt qualified fastest for the 200m final

USAIN Bolt has shown a side we have never seen, taking aim at a young rival in his post 200m semi-final interview.

Canada’s Andre De Grasse, who took bronze behind Bolt in the 100m final, went stride for stride with the reigning champion over the final 20 metres.

Bolt told Channel 7: “It was not needed.

“De Grasse just did that unnecessarily. It wasn’t cool, but it’s just one of those things.

“I was asking him, ‘What is he doing?’

“He said, ‘I have to put on some pressure,’ and I was like, ‘Why? It’s the semi-finals, you know what I mean.’

“It’s just one of those things. He’s young.”

De Grasse said he wanted to test Bolt.

“We were just having fun,” he said.

“I just wanted to go out there and push him to his limits a bit.

“I had to push him a little bit and see what he had left in the tank.”

Andre De Grasse and Usain Bolt smile over the line of the 200m semi-final

The pair were smiling at each other and not even looking ahead as they crossed the finish line.

What De Grasse managed to do what get Bolt to run the third fastest time of the year, 19.78 sec, to ensure he is the fastest qualifier into today’s final.

De Grasse broke Canada’s national record by clocking 19.80 sec.

Bolt, who is searching for his eighth Olympic gold in his favourite event, was surprised by his friend’s cheekiness.

“Andre was supposed to slow down. He didn’t!” he said.

“I said: ‘What are you doing it is the semis?’ He said he had to push me.

Bolt believes his world record set in 2009 is under threat in Rio

“I was a bit lazy, I don’t know why, but I executed it.”

Bolt has indicated he wants to bring his own world record of 19.19 sec at his final Olympic Games but wasn’t sure after the semi-finals whether that would be possible.

“It’s going to be hard,” he said. “I may get a world record, but I think getting a sub-19 [seconds] is going to be hard to get, to tell you the truth.”

The biggest shock of the semi-finals was the exit of Bolt’s main rival, Justin Gatlin.

America’s Justin Gatlin missed qualification for the 200m final

Gatlin struggled over the final 50m and finished third in his semi-final, missing out on the two automatic qualifiers with his time, 20.13 sec, not good enough to get him through to the final.

The 34-year-old American, who took the silver behind Bolt in the 100m final on Sunday night, claimed he was struggling with an ankle injury.

“My ankle is giving me a lot of problems. I can’t run properly and I had a tight turn in lane three,” Gatlin said.

“But I’m happy to still be here for the relays.”

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Bolt’s teammate Yohan Blake, who won silver behind him when the Jamaicans swept the podium during the London 2012 Olympics, also failed to qualify.

Fellow American LaShawn Merritt, the bronze medallist in the 400m, won the opening semi-final in 19.94 sec.

In the women’s 200m final Jamaican Elaine Thompson became the first woman since Florence Griffith Joyner in 1988 in Seoul to win the 100m/200m Olympic double.

Thompson hung on over the dying stages to hold off world champion Dafne Schippers, winning gold in 21.78 sec.

Schippers clocked a season’s best 21.88 sec for silver with American Tori Bowie getting the bronze in 22.15 sec.

Originally published as Usain Bolt grins way into 200m final as Gatlin, Blake miss qualification