Legendary sprinter Usain Bolt has explained his mindset on his journey to becoming the fastest man of all-time in a great lesson for Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
The Jamaican set the 100m and 200m world record and continues to hold the tag of the world’s fastest man 15 years on from setting the times. Bolt is an Olympic legend having competed at three Olympic Games and winning eight gold medals, writing himself into the history books as one of the all-time great track athletes.
Bolt’s path is one that Team USA’s hurdler and relay sensation McLaughlin-Levrone will also hope to run. Still only 25, the New Jersey native won gold at both the Tokyo and Paris Games in the 400m hurdles and 4x400m relay. Like Bolt, McLaughlin-Levrone could also win gold at three different Olympics.
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Speaking in an interview with ‘High Performance’, Bolt explained his dream of wanting to win at three Olympics in a row. “At the start of my career I made an end goal… when I started out, ‘This is what I want to achieve.’ And my biggest goal was to actually win three Olympics back-to-back – that was my main goal. That was my main target,” Bolt said.
“So when I actually got to that target, for me it was like a hard road of like 10, 12 years of continuous work. For me it was like, ‘Yes, this is it.’ I’d gotten to my goal, and that was it for me.”
Bolt continued to explain he set that goal in order to put his name alongside the greatest sportsman in history. “I wanted to set myself apart from everyone because growing up I watched Michael Johnson, I’m a massive fan of Muhammad Ali,” he added.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone is seeking Olympic history (
Getty Images)
“If you want to be great or you want to be a legend or you want to stand out, you have to do something that no one has ever done before. I tried to set the bar so high that it will probably never be broken. That was my main goal, and I got it.”
McLaughlin-Levrone has won at two Olympics in a row and she will match Bolt’s achievement if she wins again at Los Angeles in 2028. The chance to join an exclusive club of track athletes to win at three Games is a highly exclusive club but McLaughlin-Levrone can join the greats if she wins gold at her home Olympics in four years.
Bolt is currently only joined by Finland’s 1920s sensation Paavo Nurmi, who won nine gold medals in various long-distance running disciplines, and Kenya’s 1500m Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, and Paris star Faith Kipyegon as the only athletes to win individual track races at three Olympics.
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