Usain Bolt won his third gold medal of the 2012 Olympics as he anchored Jamaica's sprint relay team to a sensational world record.


He's the gift that keeps on giving. In what may yet be the last Olympic performance in the ultimate scene-stealing career, Usain Bolt scripted his perfect farewell to these Games by leading the Jamaican men's 4x100m relay team to stunning gold in a world record time of 36.85sec. It was the last word in an athletics stadium that has enjoyed more than its fair share of exclamations and superlatives.

Bolt, along with Yohan Blake, Nesta Carter and Michael Frater ensured that Jamaican independence celebrations extended into another night, by making good a boast of saving their best for the final against their great rival the USA.


Bolt, 25, become the first man to successfully defend his 100- and 200-meter titles, and he helped Jamaica become the first country to successfully defend its men’s sprint relay title since 1976. The first and only other time a track and field athlete won three events at consecutive Olympics was in 1904, when Ray Ewry won the standing high jump, the standing long jump and the standing triple jump.

Bolt enjoyed perhaps the longest lap of honour in Olympic history after the victory. He was happy to let his team-mates do their share of the talking before adding: "It was a wonderful feeling to end on a high note. It was a great championships, I'm happy, the team came out and gave it their all … I wish we could have gone faster," he half-joked, "but we leave room for improvement."

He said that he doubted if he would be aiming for a third treble-gold haul in Rio 2016: "Yohan is running hard and I'm sure there's going to be more young cats coming up."

Bolt said afterwards that this would be his last great Olympics, saying it would "be hard to repeat" what he has done here in 2016, because "Blake will be 26 by then. Bolt has surpassed Carl Lewis as the most decorated sprinter in Olympic history. He has six gold medals, which is one more than Lewis managed to win on the track.

Bolt Trades Celebration With Farah

As the crowd emptied he joined Farah, who had just received his gold medal to a rousing God Save the Queen and explained how his mo-bot celebration might be something he would persist with. "I'm going to try it out again," he suggested, " I think it looks good on me."