'Humble' Usain Bolt hints he'll go out in glory at Rio

USAIN Bolt has revealed his manifesto for further magic. "Four more years," he said when asked what he had left.

Usain Bolt

USAIN Bolt revealed his manifesto for further magic by echoing the US President's title-winning tweet. "Four more years," he said when asked what he had left. "I've accomplished all my dreams but I still have goals."

It was the first time that Bolt had publicly contemplated the end, but he remains track-and-field's ringmaster, orchestrating his first big press conference of the year with panache, charm and even "stress-free" pot shots.

So Justin Gatlin was "annoying" and the media had whipped up a storm over his supposedly pro-cannabis T-shirt. Bolt posted a picture on a social networking site of himself in front of some clothing made by a firm called The Pothead Diaries, provoking some head-shaking from anti-drugs bodies.

"I think the media likes to get headlines and try to pick something out of nothing," he said. "One of my friends had a clothing line; everyone names a clothing line after catchy things. I took a picture, and they try to make a deal out of it. For me it was 'whatever'."

Given that Bolt has admitted to smoking marijuana as a child in Jamaica, any moral outrage is probably overblown, but cannabis is on the World Anti-Doping Agency's banned list. Nevertheless, Bolt remains the good guy in sprinting's panto-cum-morality play. Opposite him stands Gatlin, a man who twice tested positive for drugs but who avoided a life ban by cutting a deal with the authorities. He denies wrongdoing, blaming his tests on attention-deficit medication and a rogue masseur, but he has still served a four-year ban.

He returned in 2010, said everyone was bored with Bolt and won a 100m bronze medal in London. The pair meet over that distance in Rome's Olympic Stadium tonight, Gatlin having run a wind-assisted 9.88sec in Eugene, Oregon, on Saturday and Bolt a semi-arthritic 10.09 last month.

"Over the years I guess there are many things people could say about Justin Gatlin," Bolt said, carefully. "He's already said a lot. I never worry about one athlete. I go to the major championships to prove myself there. That's when you show up and prove yourself."

Bolt versus Gatlin is a dramatic duel. In one corner is the tainted Olympic champion of 2004, in the other the stress-free, recession-proof, gloom-busting champion of 2008 and 2012.

It was therefore easy to detect his target when it was pointed out to him that Pietro Mennea, the late Italian sprinter after whom tonight's meeting is named, had once talked of humility.

Bolt famously left London with the words "bask in my glory" but there has always been a tongue-in-cheek element to his ego. "For me, I was brought up to be humble," he insisted before saying how there was a wealth of young talent in Jamaica but he would continue to beat them all.

"Humility should be one of the greatest assets to any athlete. With hard work there should be humility; sometimes there's not."

The glory-baskers might now wonder about the 26-year-old. If Gatlin is ageing "like a fine wine", as he has suggested, Bolt has cause to be drunk on his success. "I do think back to the days when it was all about enjoyment," he said. "I raced with a lot of fun and a lot of joy." As an afterthought, he added: "I still enjoy it but back then winning came very easily."

Even Bolt must fight for his motivation, but he said that he was more stressed about the retirement of Alex Ferguson than his slow start to the year in the Cayman Islands. "I did a bad performance," he said when asked if a lingering hamstring problem had contributed to his near-downfall.

"We went back to the drawing board. We looked over everything, worked on it, and it's shown in the last couple of weeks."

If Bolt does hang up his spikes in 2016, his sport and the Olympics will be bereft, but for now he says it is about a successful third term.

"It's all about dominating for those four years," he said. "I'm looking forward to the next Olympics and doing something that's never been done before."

Gatlin and the world have been warned.

The Times