Usain Bolt made his comeback to the world of track and field on Sunday night and, for a moment, it was like the good old days. There was his trademark To Da World pose before the 100m finals. The cheers and adulation of 60,000 fans in Tokyo’s National Stadium. A reminder of glories past.
The 39-year-old Jamaican had not watched athletics at all since retiring in 2017 until seeing Melissa Jefferson-Wooden and Oblique Seville win gold. And, as he also admitted, he now spends his time streaming movies and building Lego – and even gets out of breath when he walks up stairs.
Bolt, who is in Tokyo to promote the new World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest next year, has always had an extraordinary ability to connect with people around the world. But these days he confessed to a more sedentary lifestyle at home.
Asked what he did on a typical day, he replied: “Well normally, I wake up just in time to see the kids off to school, and then it depends on what I have to do. If I have nothing to do, I just chill out. I might work out sometimes if I’m in a good mood. I just watch some series and chill until the kids come home.
“I spend some time with them, hang out, until they start annoying me then I leave. And then afterwards, I just stay at home and watch movies or I’m into Lego now, so I do Lego.”
Bolt, who ruptured an achilles last year, said he no longer runs. “No, I mostly do gym workouts. I’m not a fan, but I think now that I’ve been out for a while I have to actually start running. Because when I walk up stairs I get out of breath. I think when I start working on it fully again, I will probably have to do some laps just to get my breathing right.”
However, he insisted that watching track and field again had made him want to bring his children, Olympia Lightning Bolt, five, and his twin sons, Saint Leo and Thunder Bolt, four, to the world championships in Beijing in two years’ time.
That, of course, is where his legend began at the 2008 Olympics. “I’m excited because I get to bring my kids and I can tell them: ‘Listen, this is where it all happened.’ I’ve shown my kids videos and stuff like that. They’ll be six and seven, and they’ll kind of understand the moment, and I can explain to them what their dad has done over the years.”
