Usain Bolt: Rio ‘definitely my last Olympics’

By Nick ZaccardiMar 21, 2016, 3:37 PM EDT

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Usain Bolt said Friday he will not compete in the 2020 Olympics, according to Agence France-Presse, after not ruling out the Tokyo Games in an interview that aired in January.

“[Rio] will definitely be my last Olympics,” Bolt said Friday, according to AFP. “It’s going to be hard to keep the motivation to go on for four more years, so it’ll definitely be my last one.”

In a Jamaican TV interview that aired in January, Bolt said his coach proposed that he could compete in a fifth Olympics at Tokyo 2020.

“We’ll see, because the coach say I can go on to even the next Olympics in 2020,” Bolt said, adding a chuckle and presumably meaning his longtime coach, Glen Mills. “I’m not going to say what I’m going to do, but my coach said I should stop talking about retirement. Let’s just go through those two years and see what happens.

“He said I could, if I wanted to [go to 2020]. I do believe my coach.”

Bolt had previously said for years that Rio 2016 would be his final Olympics and that he might retire in 2016 or after the 2017 World Championships in London.

Bolt will turn 34 in August 2020 and be at a similar age to Olympic sprint champions Carl Lewis (35), Michael Johnson (33) and Donovan Bailey (32) at their final Games.

“The older you get, the harder training is going to get,” Bolt said in the January interview. “So, 32, 33, 34, it’s going to be a lot of work. If I feel I can do it, I will definitely try, but, for me, I want to retire on top of my game. I don’t want to continue when I know I’m not going to push myself hard enough.”

Bolt has long cited a conversation with Johnson, who retired near the top of his game after repeating as Olympic 400m champion at Sydney 2000.

“That’s one question I asked Michael Johnson, why did you retire when you were dominating?” Bolt said in the January interview. “He said, ‘Listen, I’ve done everything in this sport. I was on top. Why should I continue?’ So you accomplish everything you want to accomplish. At some point, you just say, listen, let me leave the sport.”

If Bolt wins three gold medals at a third straight Olympics in August, he will share the record of nine Olympic track and field titles with Paavo Nurmi and Carl Lewis. The lure of 2020 could include the possibility of holding the record by himself.

Bolt also mentioned Michael Jordan in the January interview.

“He left the sport when he was great [with the Chicago Bulls in 1998], and he came back [with the Washington Wizards in 2001],” said Bolt, who met Jordan at last year’s Super Bowl. “Made a small mark off his career, but he’s still the great Michael Jordan. So I don’t want to push myself in that position, to continue in the sport while everybody is stepping up and I’m going backwards.”

MORE: Seb Coe refuses to name Bolt greatest ever

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Adeline Gray, mom to twins, makes wrestling worlds team; Jordan Burroughs defeated

By OlympicTalkJun 10, 2023, 9:34 PM EDT

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Adeline Gray, a six-time world champion and Olympic silver medalist, returned from having twins last July to make the U.S. wrestling team for September’s world championships.

Gray, 32, swept 19-year-old Kennedy Blades in a best-of-three series for the 76kg spot at Saturday’s Final X, the event that determines most of the world team across men’s and women’s freestyle and Greco-Roman. On April 29, Blades earned a 10-point mercy-rule win over Gray at the U.S. Open in Gray’s first competition since childbirth.

“It’s like every three weeks it’s a little bit more used to my body,” Gray, who returned to training in January while recovering from an ab separation from the pregnancy, said last month after winning a tournament to qualify for Final X. “There’s pieces of wrestling that you have to put together. It’s just going to take me a little bit of time.”

Every active male U.S. Olympic gold medalist also made the world team except for Jordan Burroughs, who was ousted by Chance Marsteller 8-3 in their third and deciding 79kg match. Burroughs. who won the opening match in the best-of-three series, saw his streak of world championship teams end at nine, dating to his first full freestyle season in 2011.

Burroughs, 34, earned a medal at all of those world championships, including six golds, plus his 2012 Olympic gold, to break the record for most global titles for a U.S. wrestler.

Burroughs has competed in the non-Olympic 79kg division since missing the Tokyo Olympic team in his familiar 74kg class. Now, Burroughs must move back to an Olympic weight ahead of the April Olympic Trials, where he may have to dethrone four-time world champion Kyle Dake to make the team for Paris.

Olympic champs who made the world team: Kyle Snyder (who made it when J’den Cox forfeited due to injury), Gable Steveson (who swept Mason Parris) and David Taylor (who swept Aaron Brooks).

Gray was the most decorated woman to qualify Saturday. Tokyo Olympic champion Tamyra Mensah-Stock announced her retirement from wrestling last month to join the WWE. Rio Olympic champion Helen Maroulis was granted a delay for her series with Xochitl Mota-Pettis for medical reasons.

Past moms to make world teams include Hall of Famers Tricia Saunders and Kristie Davis, who both won multiple world titles as moms. Saunders and Davis competed before women’s wrestling was added to the Olympics in 2004.

A USA Wrestling spokesperson could not think of a mom who has made an Olympic team, but couldn’t say for sure, when asked in April. At next April’s Olympic Trials, Gray can achieve the feat while also bidding to break the record for oldest female U.S. Olympic wrestler by nearly three years.

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Iga Swiatek wins third French Open title, fourth Grand Slam, but this final was not easy

By OlympicTalkJun 10, 2023, 5:30 PM EDT

Iga Swiatek won her third French Open title and her fourth Grand Slam overall, pushed to a third set in a major final for the first time.

Swiatek, a 22-year-old Pole, outlasted unseeded Czech Karolina Muchova 6-2, 5-7, 6-4 on Saturday at Roland Garros. Muchova tested Swiatek, the only singles player in the Open Era to win their first seven major final sets. She became the first player to take a set off Swiatek in the tournament.

Swiatek looked en route to another major final sweep, up 3-0 in the second set. She then committed 11 unforced errors (versus four winners) over the rest of the set as Muchova rallied back (with 10 winners versus 11 unforced errors).

Muchova then won the first eight points of the third set. Swiatek, under the most pressure of her career on the sport’s biggest stages, passed the test. The players exchanged breaks of serve, and Muchova had another break point for a chance to serve for the championship, but Swiatek fended her off.

“After so many ups and downs, I kind of stopped thinking about the score,” Swiatek said. “I wanted to use my intuition more because I knew that I can play a little bit better if I’m going to get a little bit more loosened up.”

FRENCH OPEN DRAWS: Women | Men | Broadcast Schedule

No woman lower than the 14th seed has beaten both world Nos. 1 and 2 at a Grand Slam since the WTA rankings began in 1975. Muchova, ranked 43rd, nearly pulled it off.

“The feeling is a little bitter because I felt it was very close,” she said. “But overall, I mean, to call myself Grand Slam finalist, it’s amazing achievement.”

The French Open finishes Sunday with the men’s final. Novak Djokovic faces Casper Ruud, eyeing a 23rd major title to break his tie with Rafael Nadal for the men’s singles record. NBC, NBCSports.com/live, the NBC Sports app and Peacock air live coverage at 9 a.m. ET.

Go back to the fall 2020 French Open. Swiatek, a 54th-ranked teen, won the tournament without dropping a set for her first tour-level title.

Since, she climbed to the top of the rankings (and has stayed there for 62 weeks running), tied the longest WTA win streak in 32 years (37 matches in a row in 2022) and won majors on clay and hard courts.

She beat challengers from different categories in major finals: a Slam champ (Sofia Kenin), a teen phenom (Coco Gauff), an emerged rival (Ons Jabeur) and now an unseeded (because of injuries)-but-dangerous veteran in Muchova. Swiatek is the youngest woman to reach four major titles since Serena Williams in 2002.

Yet this French Open began with talk of a Big Three in women’s tennis rather than singular dominance. Since last year’s French Open, Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka and Russian-born Kazakh Elena Rybakina both won their first major and beat Swiatek multiple times.

Swiatek faced neither in Paris but still called it “a pretty stressful tournament,” noting a right thing injury that forced her to retire during her last match before the tournament.

Sabalenka was stunned by Muchova in Thursday’s semifinals, the erratic serving and nerves of her past reappearing. Rybakina had to withdraw earlier in the tournament due to illness.

Next up: the grass court season and Wimbledon, where Swiatek hasn’t made it past the fourth round in three tries. She did win the 2018 junior title at the All England Club. but Sabalenka and Rybakina have had more recent success there.

If Swiatek can lift the Venus Rosewater Dish, she will be an Australian Open shy of a career Grand Slam. Her chances of adding an Olympic gold medal to that collection are very high, given Roland Garros hosts tennis at the 2024 Paris Games.

“I’m not setting these crazy records or goals for myself,” she said. “I know that keeping it cool is the best way to do it for me.”

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