You might not follow track and field or come from a nation where the sport isn’t extremely popular, but you still know Usain Bolt. That’s how famous he has become over the years by dominating the track. But that’s not all. In addition to the Olympic golds, he had won something even more valuable: admirers. To be honest, he has been a different person; the Jamaican didn’t like how serious he was. He fist-bumped track volunteers, respectfully spoke with them before races, and posed for photographs. He got the title of “Fastest man to run, fastest man to start fistbumps and high fives.” People that went to his last race know how much the crowd adored him, but if you didn’t, you can only guess.

Usain Bolt ran a 100m race on August 5, 2017, at the World Championships in London. He was up against Justin Gatlin, Christian Coleman, and others. This was the last race of his career. When the gun went off, Bolt’s usually fast start slowed down, and he fell behind Christian Coleman’s quick start and Justin Gatlin’s steady charge. He pushed himself to the limit and closed the gap, but in a twist no one saw coming, Gatlin pulled ahead, with Coleman right behind him. Bolt came in third with a time of 9.96, which was an unusual bronze. Hell broke free for the American athlete in the London Olympic Stadium.

At first, an uncomfortable silence took over the stadium. As The Guardian describes it, “When it flashed on the scoreboard that Gatlin had taken gold in 9.92sec – 0.02 clear of the young American Christian Coleman, who took silver, and Bolt who claimed bronze a further 0.01sec behind – most of the 56,000 crowd in the stadium went silent before they collectively booed in disgust. ” Gatlin had held a finger to his lip, which the guardian called an attempt to silence the crowd. But then there was Usain Bolt, being the big man he is, showing a gesture of true sportsmanship.

For the first time since his false start in Daegu 2011, Bolt had been beaten on a major stage. Yet there was no sulking, no excuses. Instead, he walked straight to Gatlin—the winner—and embraced him, even as the American bowed in respect. “Usain said to me, ‘congratulations, you deserve it’. He knows how hard I work,” Gatlin said later. Then he also lavished praise on the crowd. “London, I really appreciate the support you gave me. I’m just sorry I couldn’t deliver as I wanted. It is one of those things.”

Then, in true Bolt fashion, he flipped the script: what could’ve felt like mourning became celebration—posing, smiling, soaking it all in. The Jamaican performed his traditional lap of honour and posed for selfies as if he had just claimed his 12th world title. This was Gatlin’s first world title and also the first and last time he defeated Bolt in his career. For Bolt, though, as fate would have it, he never won his last race.

Usain Bolt never won his last race

Usain Bolt, the man who turned sprinting into a spectacle, didn’t get the farewell he or the world imagined. At the 2017 World Championships in London, the grand finale was set: one last race in the men’s 4×100 m relay. During the anchor leg of Jamaica’s men’s 4×100 m relay at the World Championships in London, Bolt took the baton with the hope of making history by winning his fifth straight relay gold. It felt like fate when the audience cheered and the baton reached Bolt for the anchor leg. But then he suddenly grimaced, faltered, and fell in the last few seconds.

His left hamstring had torn. The fastest man in history was left crawling on the track, not because he was happy, but because he was hurt. He turned down the wheelchair that was offered to him and instead elected to limp to the finish line with the support of his coworkers. The scoreboard displayed “DNF.” Great Britain won the relay in 37.47 seconds. There was no happy ending, only sadness.

“Sadly, I have a tear of the proximal myotendinous junction of biceps femoris in my left hamstring with partial retraction. 3 months rehab,” he later revealed. Further down the years, he would reveal another reason, but in the end, Bolt retired with 14 world championship medals, which is the most ever by a male track and field athlete. What are your thoughts about his career?