A noisy tin roof bangs in the wind of a sports hall where a man is holding court. Only some advertising from a German sports firm and the group of international journalists give away that the man is Usain Bolt, the fastest runner in the world.
All afternoon Bolt, now 29, had been questioned at the blue track which bears his name at the University of the West Indies and now it continues in the hall. Yet the six-time Olympic champion remains relaxed and polite, apologizing when his mobile phone rings.
Even the most pressing question in athletics in current times, relating to issues of doping and corruption in governing body IAAF, is brushed off easily. “I’m just focusing on myself,” he says.
Bolt’s focus is on completing the ‘triple-triple’ of adding the 100m, 200m and 4x100m gold medals in the Rio Olympics to the sets he already holds from Beijing 2008 and London 2012.
“If I do that triple-triple in Rio, then I can be compared with the likes of Mohamed Ali and Michael Jordan,” he said. "It will be my last chance at the Olympics with the Rio Games definitely my last.”
Bolt is not holding anything back in his bid to make history. The day after the media event, he is on the track half an hour before sunrise with the clock not yet ticked around to 6 am. “In January an ankle injury cost me four weeks training time after I went over on it,” he said. “But I am on the right track and I’m already doing tempo runs.”
Under the supervision of coach Glen Mills, the world record holder over both 100m and 200m repeats runs of 120m.
In between he stretches vigorously to ensure he remains flexible with only a small bandage on his left ankle showing evidence of his earlier injury.
The injury means Bolt is only planning one race, on June 11 in Kingston, before the selection meeting for the Jamaican Olympic team takes place early in July.
That is not an unusual situation for him as in 2015 he had a similarly light racing schedule before the World Championships in Beijing—where he won three gold medals, just as he intends to do in Rio.