Usain Bolt a 4x100m gold away from ‘being in that bracket among Pele and Muhammad Ali’

Usain Bolt successfully defended his 200m Olympic title but fell short of his attempt to break his won world record. Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images

Usain Bolt, defying his own “ageing” body, aims for an unprecedented “triple triple” of Olympic gold medals after another stunning win in the 200m final.

Bolt, 29, secured his second Rio gold and a third straight 200m late on Thursday night. He will complete a third straight sweep of the Olympic sprint medals if Jamaica win the 4x100m relay on Friday.

Bolt said his win had been “brilliant” even though he did not come close to his aim of breaking his world record of 19.19sec.

“I wasn’t happy with the time, my body just wouldn’t respond in the straight. I’m getting older and my body is ageing,” he said. “Personally I think this is my last 200 but my coach may beg to differ.”

Bolt’s time of 19.78sec was still enough to easily beat Canadian Andre de Grasse and France’s Christophe Lemaitre.

Bolt said that he has done enough to be ranked alongside sport’s top heroes Pele and Muhammad Ali. “I am trying to be one of the greatest. Be among Ali and Pele.

“I hope after these Games I will be in that bracket.”

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Certainly a triumph in the relay would further his claim to “greatest” status, which has been building since he won the 100m, 200m and relay golds in Beijing in 2008 for his first treble.

Bolt can join American Frank Wykoff (1928, 1932, 1936) as the only athlete to win three gold medals in the men’s 4x100m relay. He would join Finland’s Paavo Nurmi and American Carl Lewis on a record nine Olympic athletics gold medals.

But Jamaica will face a stiff challenge from a US squad aiming to regain gold in an event they once dominated. The United States failed to finish in 2008 and was stripped of its 2012 silver in London after Tyson Gay’s positive drugs test.

Bolt’s bid for history is one of 22 finals on Friday as the Games hurtle into their final weekend.

The US women will try to make the most of their reprieve in the 4x100m relay. They ran alone on the track to book a place in the final after it was ruled their baton-drop in the preliminaries was the result of Allyson Felix being knocked off-balance by Brazilian runner Kauiza Venancio.

The Americans produced the fastest time to knock China out of the final.

“I wouldn’t want to bump anyone out of a slot, but at the same time we were impeded,” Felix said after a protest by Chinese officials was dismissed.

American athletes raked in four more golds on Thursday with victories in the men’s and women’s 400m hurdles, the decathlon and the shot put.

Trinidad-born American Kerron Clement won the men’s 400m hurdles gold, clocking 47.73sec to hold off a furious late challenge from Kenya’s Boniface Tumuti.

Dalilah Muhammad became the first US winner in the women’s 400m hurdles, blasting out of the blocks and holding on for a deserved gold in 53.13sec.

Defending champion and world record holder Ashton Eaton won the decathlon title, matching Briton Daley Thompson’s back-to-back titles of 1980 and 1984.

And American Ryan Crouser won the men’s shot with an Olympic record of 22.52m.

Brazilians also celebrated wildly on Copacabana after Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt won the men’s beach volleyball title in the rain, beating Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo 21-19, 21-17.

Hulking 6ft 8ins (2.03m) Cerutti, nicknamed “The Mammoth” erased the heartache of a runner-up finish in 2012 as he and new partner Schmidt thumped Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo 21-19, 21-17.

More, they did it in front of ecstatic fans at the spiritual home of their sport.

“It’s incredible. This is place is like the Maracana of beach volleyball,” Cerutti said, comparing the Copacabana sand to Rio’s iconic football stadium.

In taekwondo, Alizadeh claimed a breakthrough medal for an Iranian woman, beating Sweden’s Nikita Glasnovic 5-1 for bronze in the under 57kg class won by Britain’s Jade Jones.

“I am so happy for Iranian girls because it is the first medal and I hope at the next Olympics we will get a gold,” Alizadeh said.

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