Pressure mounts on Usain Bolt to triumph in Rio and make up for Russian outrage
USAIN BOLT admits the pressure is on him to be the saviour of the Rio Games after the damage to the Olympics caused by the Russian doping scandal.
The sprint superstar will start the defence of his 100m, 200m and 4x100m Olympic titles in Rio in just over a fortnight.
Last summer he became the hero of the World Athletics Championships when he beat American drug cheat Justin Gatlin - favourite on the start line - to all three world crowns.
The Russian track and field team will not be in Rio having been kicked out by the sport's governing body the IAAF, led by its president Seb Coe.
But on Sunday the International Olympic Committee (IOC) bottled demands to chuck out the entire Russian team after a report found evidence of Cold War style state-sponsored doping involving 30 Olympic and Paralympic sports - not just athletics.
Bolt, who met up with some of Team GB's hockey girls when he arrived in Rio, admitted: "I know the sport needs me to win - and come out on top.
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"People always say to me, 'Usain when you leave the sport, the sport is going to go down. But I'm not going to look at it like that. There are a lot of athletes stepping up.
"This year is one of the poorest I have ever seen as an Olympic field for men really - the women have really shown more promise running fast times. The men have really unperformed this season, but I'm sure when we get to the Olympics it won't be like that.
"But I'm not going to lose one of the golds, for sure."
The Jamaican, 30 next month, also admits the fear of being caught up in an extremist attack does prey on his mind. He was in Munich visiting his doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller Wolfhart when news emerged of the truck attack in the French city of Nice on Bastille Day - July 14 - that killed 84 people.
And Munich was itself the scene of bloodshed last week with a teenager shot dead nine people.
Said Bolt: "It is scary. But if you live scared, you don't live at all. So I try to live my life to the fullest and when it's my time, it's my time."
Bolt, the 100m and 200m world record holder was forced to pull out of the Jamaican trials last month with a hamstring injury but won his only 200m outing of the season at the Anniversary Games in London last Friday.
He admits: "At the start of last year I noticed that injuries take a little bit more time to get back to where you want to be. My coach always tells me that the older you get it's going to get harder, and you have to push yourself.
"He also always says 'Usain you can always go on to the 2020 Olympics if you want,'" Bolt said. "So this is why he tells me to stop talking about retirement and just take it a year at a time."