Shimmying amid a troupe of semi-naked samba dancers and wise-cracking with journalists, Usain Bolt is determined to bow out of the Olympics with a flourish.
The 29-year-old Jamaican sprint star took centre-stage on Monday at his first major press conference since arriving in Rio de Janeiro for his final Games.
And from the moment he strutted onto the stage at Rio’s Cidade des Artes theater — instructing his audience to applaud — he was determined to entertain.
“You’ve got to clap much louder than that, that was weak,” Bolt joked.
The setting of the largest theater in South America could not have been more appropriate for track and field’s greatest showman.
“I like to entertain, because that’s what people come out and see,” Bolt said.
“I try to entertain and make it different. That’s my personality.”
And it works. A Norwegian stood up at the end of the press conference and said: “I don’t really have a question I just want to say I really love you man.”
It was a reminder of just what athletics will lose when Bolt walks away from the sport next year after the World Championships in London.
Before that however he has his final Olympics to think about, where he will bid to win 100m, 200m and 4x100m titles for a third straight Games, the fabled “Treble-Treble.”
“This is the last one for sure,” Bolt said when asked if he may yet extend his remarkable career.
“I’ve done enough. I’ve proven myself over and over again, this is the last one.”
Bolt is preparing to bow out as athletics reels from two of the biggest controversies in the sport’s history, the Russian doping scandal and corruption allegations against the former leadership of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).
Even so, Bolt believes athletics has turned the corner. “For me I think we’re going in the right direction, I must say,” Bolt said.
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