The athletics world, and even those who don’t really watch sport, were pretty disappointed with what happened on Saturday night.

Jamaican sprint god Usain Bolt ran his final individual race at the 2017 IAAF World Championships in London, and it wasn’t the fairy tale finish that we had all hoped for.

He was pipped into third place, meaning he landed his first ever bronze medal at a major event.

Here’s how that played out:

It would be fair to say that Justin Gatlin, the American who took gold and has twice been banned for doping offences, was not a popular winner.

Despite the setback Bolt won’t be going hungry any time soon, because the overwhelming majority of his money doesn’t come from track results.

Bolt is estimated to be worth close to R800 million, but only R3 million is from winning races.

Here’s the Telegraph on how he makes the moola:

Race fees

The winner of an individual Diamond League race receives just under £8,000 – the culmination of months of work. Cristiano Ronaldo takes about four-and-a half hours to earn that much in wages alone. Bolt has managed this 23 times, and has won an overall Diamond League Race once: that’s about £210,000 so far…

A gold medal at the IAAF World Championships is worth around £46,500, a silver £23,000, and a world record £77,500 …

On top of that, the sprinter can command huge appearance fees, given his headlining potential, reaching the dizzying heights of £270,000. If he runs a typical non-championship 100 metres in 10 seconds, that’s £27,000 a second.

That pales into insignificance when compared to the sponsors, of course:

Sponsorship

Before the Beijing Olympics, Bolt’s only sponsor was his kit supplier, PUMA, which has supported the star since his junior days, and Digicel, a Jamaican mobile phone company…

His importance to the former cannot be overstated: the brand’s CEO, Jochen Zeitz, estimated Bolt’s marketing value at just over £277 million after his history-making efforts at the 2009 Berlin World Championships. The German sportswear brand provides his largest pay cheque by some margin, and the athlete receives the astronomical sum of just under £8,000,000 a year for his troubles

His latest high profile partnership with PUMA is the Bolt Legacy Spikes, unveiled during a press conference in London.

Wellesley and Jennifer Bolt gifted their son his first pair of spikes back when he began running on the track, so it was only fitting that they were there to hand him the final pair of his professional career as well. These are the Bolt Legacy Spikes made exclusively for London and they have design details from key moments in his journey.

The right shoe is labelled “Forever” and has the alpha symbol to represent the beginning of his career. The shoe is in the purple and green from William Knibb High School where he started on the track. The left shoe is labelled “Fastest” and has the omega symbol to represent the finish of his career. The left shoe is gold to represent his successes and the sock liner highlights his major achievements since 2002.

The tongue of the spikes have Usain’s signature and a mark of his classic pose embossed, the Jamaican flag is also incorporated to show the love he has for his home country.

If it’s good enough for Usain, it’s damn sure good enough for me.

Thanks for all the good times, big man, and that final individual race won’t diminish athletics’ most legendary career.

He still has the 4 x 100m relay to come, where Jamaica are hot favourites to take gold, so here’s hoping we see him go out where he belongs – on top of the podium.

[source:telegraph]