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I was never No 2: Usain Bolt

Updated on: 26 July,2015 07:44 AM IST  | 
AFP |

Usain Bolt vows to stay No 1 till he retires after clocking 9.87 secs to win 100m race

I was never No 2: Usain Bolt

Usain Bolt gestures to the crowd ahead of his 100m race during the London Diamond League on Friday

London: Usain Bolt insists he is still king of the sprinters after returning from injury with back-to-back 100m times of 9.87sec at the London Diamond League meeting.

Usain Bolt gestures to the crowd ahead of his 100m race during the London Diamond League on Friday. Pic/Getty Images
Usain Bolt gestures to the crowd ahead of his 100m race during the London Diamond League on Friday. Pic/Getty Images 


Asked if his winning performances — in the heats and final on a rain-soaked Olympic Stadium track — proved that he was still the world's number one, the 28-year-old Jamaican replied defiantly: "I was never number two."


"I am still number one," said Olympic champion and world record holder Bolt. "I will continue being number one. Until I retire, that's the plan."


On 100m times recorded in 2015, Bolt is now ranked number six. Justin Gatlin, the American who has served two doping bans, tops the list with 9.74sec and has also run 9.75sec twice and 9.78sec.

Room for improvement
Bolt, however, clearly has room for improvement before he defends his 100m and 200m titles at the world championships in Beijing, which begin on August 22, on the Bird's Nest track where he won his first trio of Olympic gold medals (100m, 200m and 4x100m relay) in 2008.

The Jamaican has won every global 100m and 200m title contested over the past seven years, with the exception of the 100m at the 2011 world championships in South Korea when he was disqualified for a false start.

The fact that he did not get off to the best of starts in his heat and got off to a sluggish one in the final shows that he has room for improvement in the four weeks ahead — as does the fact that he was running on a rain-soaked track and into a head wind on both occasions (-0.8 metres per second in the final and -1.2 metres per second in the heat).

Asked how fast he thought he could go in Beijing, Bolt replied: "Anything is possible. I thought I would run fast in the final tonight but I got a bad start.

"When I got a bad start, then I kind of lost focus for a minute and lost my form but at the last I got it back. It taught me a lot, these two races. "I just need to remember if I have a bad start, then I need to focus on the work I have done and get the job done.

'No specific time'
"I was not looking for any specific time but I know I could have gone faster if I had got my start." There have been claims that Bolt has been stopping the clock at 9.7sec on the training track, an assertion he declined to dismiss.

"I have been running fast," he said. "I can't say I haven't been running fast in training. "It is easier to run fast in training because you are under no pressure and you just have to work on it."

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