What a difference a day makes. After the rain-sodden minor chords of Friday’s opening day of the Rio 2016 athletics, the Olympic stadium was transformed on the second morning. With Usain Bolt, the world’s lone through-the-roof athletic superstar due in town, the swooping stands of this ramped-up old football ground were re-cast into a fun, fizzy sun-drenched place, three-quarters full by noon and with a crackle of something authentically Olympian in the air.
As Bolt emerged at 12.37pm to take to the blocks for his opening heat of these games, a huge rolling cheer erupted around the stands, a sound unlike anything heard so far. This was wilder, shriller, more to do with presence and stature, the pure event-glamour only Bolt brings to proceedings. He worked the crowd, shooting off into a practice start, then turning to applaud magisterially the Bolt-mania from the people craning from the bleachers.
Everyone loves a star, just as everybody loves a little glimpse of something ultimate, some pure human white heat. There were huge cheers again as the face of the quickest man in history appeared on the big screen, followed by profound, gulping silence in the crouch for the gun.
After which, the race itself was a bit of a stroll. Bolt stretched home in 10.07, slowed at the line, shook a few hands, then yawned off to do his media duties. His job was done here. Games on, his final wave to a gurgling crowd seemed to say. You may proceed, Rio 2016.
A little sun helps with these things, as does the start of the weekend. Really, though, this was all about one man. This will be a final Olympics for the world record holder and two-time champion. The opportunity is there in the small hours of tomorrow morning to take a third gold in the prime event, the G-spot of any Games, those 35 perfect strides, during which the athletes are barely in contact with the ground beneath their feet, but which has always been held as a basic measure of human ultimacy.
In Rio, Bolt’s role as a kind of life raft for the Games themselves has seemed more profound than ever. He remains a cloudless superstar presence, providing a high-spec cover for the more addled and tarnished Olympic subplots. On the opening morning of heats in Rio, the battle with the American Justin Gatlin once again fed into this narrative.
So profound is the contrast in back story and manner with the two-time doper Gatlin, a conveniently charisma-free, thrillingly powerful 34-year-old warrior of the sprints, that it has been tempting for some to ramp up the comparison into some kind of ultimate battle of good and evil. Here comes Gatlin again, a slavering Orc pounding down the track in pursuit of our own fun, frisky, 6ft 5in Jamaican Bilbo Baggins.
The truth, of course, is more nuanced. Gatlin still disputes his first drug ban, imposed for taking medicine related to suffering attention deficit disorder. Earlier in the week his own team-mate, the swimmer Lilly King, had suggested he shouldn’t be at these games at all. Gatlin’s response – “I’ve served that time” – was cool, even quite astute, with its faint hints of something that goes beyond the track in America, into other realms of crime and punishment.
Gatlin had run before Bolt in the second heat here, pounding his way to victory from lane eight, feet smacking the super-fast blue track, but slowing also at the end too. Yohan Blake, another prodigious Jamaican sprinter, also won his heat in a blur of compact, fast-twitch muscle.
Bolt versus history, Bolt versus Gatlin, will remain the story. Bolt’s presence alone, his charisma, his sheen of all-time star quality will continue to act as an elixir to all the bumps and bruises and noises off.
As he disappeared down the tunnel the stadium took a breath, a little drunk on the spectacle. In the end Bolt might not be able to save the Olympics from itself. But for a morning in the Rio sunshine, it felt like he might just save a day or two before then.
