Bolt planning Rio Rout

ZURICH (AP):What’s left for a man who has won three Olympic sprint titles back to back?

ZURICH (AP):What’s left for a man who has won three Olympic sprint titles back to back?

Win all three again, of course.

Usain Bolt said yesterday that he is planning to defend his 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay gold medals at the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.

“To actually go to Rio and win again would be a feat in itself,” said Bolt, speaking ahead of today’s Weltklasse Diamond League meeting in Zurich.

The Jamaican will run in the 100m today after a World Championship sweep of the sprints in Moscow, where he talked of working hard to attain “the greatness thing”.

Most would say he’s achieved that already.

He completed the same triple at the Olympic Games in Beijing and London.

“For me, the key thing is just to go to defend my titles, and that’s my focus,” Bolt said. “It would be the first time anybody has ever won three times in a row.”

Bolt became the most decorated athlete in World Championships history this month, with his career tally of eight gold and two silver lifting him above American great Carl Lewis.

Three more gold for Bolt in Rio would still leave him trailing Lewis’ Olympic track and field record of nine gold and one silver.

“I won’t be adding a fourth event in Rio, for sure,” said the 27-year-old Bolt, whose 34th birthday could fall during the 2020 Summer Games.

Bolt’s news conference was held at FIFA headquarters, across the city from the stadium where he will run today.

Bolt was greeted on arrival by FIFA President Sepp Blatter, and later accepted a blue FIFA football shirt bearing his name and the number ‘9’.

Blatter joked that nine seconds was probably the limit for Bolt, whose 100m world record set in 2009 stands at 9.58 seconds.

Bolt suggested he was capable of running in the 9.70s at Weltklasse, where a warm, still evening is forecast.

“I have gotten a lot of rest,” said Bolt, who last year in cool, wet conditions set a Weltklasse meet record of 19.66 in the 200m. “This track is always a fast track and I’ve run some fast times here.”

He ran a season’s-best 9.77 in Moscow, and rivals today include Worlds runner-up Justin Gatlin of the United States and Jamaican bronze medalist Nesta Carter.

Jamaican sprint star Usain Bolt (right) meets with FIFA President Sepp Blatter yesterday at the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, ahead of today’s Diamond League meet in the city.-AP