Usain Bolt relishes 100m win at Golden Spike

Usain Bolt has expressed delight after using his strong finish to win the 100 meters in 9.98 seconds at the Golden Spike meet on Friday.

Bolt recovered from a slow start but pulled ahead in the second half of the race to breeze unchallenged to victory.

With the time, Bolt improved on his season’s best of 10.05 in the Cayman Islands on Saturday. After that first race of the season, he needed treatment on a tight hamstring in Germany on the way to the Czech Republic.

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He didn’t appear to be limited on Friday though his time was still far from his world record of 9.58 in 2009.

“My reaction was good,” Bolt said about the start. “The power behind the start wasn’t there. I didn’t execute.

“I had to get to work a little bit harder at the end to get up the speed,” Bolt said. “If I can improve that it should be OK.”

Bolt is also scheduled to race in the London Diamond League meet on July 22 in his only other competition in Europe, two weeks before the Rio de Janeiro Games.

“This is a very important season. This is a very big year for me,” he added.

“I have a lot work to do. I just need to continue, need more races to go.”

Ramon Gittens of Barbados finished second in 10.21 while Hassan Taftian of Iran was third in 10.25.

It was the eighth time Bolt has raced at the Golden Spike. In 2012, he won the 100 in Ostrava in 10.04, a poor time by his standards, before he won three more gold medals at the London Olympics. He won his first three golds at the 2008 Beijing Games.

Olympic champion, Renaud Lavillenie of France cleared 5.83 meters to win the pole vault, beating world champion, Shawnacy Barber of Canada, who made 5.70.

Jarret Eaton led the American 1-2 finish in the 110 hurdles, in a personal-best 13.25 seconds to edge Jeff Porter by 0.17.

World and Olympic decathlon champion Ashton Eaton of the United States, who was scheduled to compete in the long jump and later in the 100 alongside Bolt, withdrew from his first competition after completing only two jumps.

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