Monaco: Jamaican sprinting legend Usain Bolt insisted here Friday night that he is on the right path as he targets the defence of his 100m crown at next month’s World Championships in London.
In his swansong season, the 30-year-old has struggled to light up the track. In his outings over the blue riband event so far this season, Bolt had clocked 10.03s in Kingston and 10.06s in Ostrava against relatively weak opposition before finally dipping under the 10sec barrier at the Diamond League meet here.
A season’s best of 9.95 seconds to win at a packed out 17,000-capacity Stade Louis II was just the tonic, the towering Jamaican said of his second appearance in Europe in his farewell season.
“I’m going in the right direction, although there is still a lot of work to do,” he said after running a time that now moves him up to joint seventh on a 2017 world list headed by Christian Coleman of the United States with 9.82 seconds. “Running sub-10 is always good. It was an exciting race, there was lots of energy.”
Bolt, winner of eight Olympic and 11 world gold medals, will bring down the curtain on his glittering career at the London Worlds. And he acknowledged that his final season on the track was an emotional one.
“I am always here for the fans, and of course I will miss the vibe around the track,” Bolt pointed out. “There are mixed emotions always – happy for my career, sad that it is ending.”
