Early on Sunday evening in Rio’s Olympic Stadium, with fans slowly filling the stands, high jumpers warming up with lazy flops into the pit, and a pair of relentlessly upbeat hosts regaling the crowd with a high-volume samba lesson, the jumbo screens at each end of the track periodically displayed a digital countdown ticking off the minutes and seconds until the start of the men’s 100-meter final, still more than two hours away.
Anticipation for that event, the final race of the program and the much-ballyhooed showdown between Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin, would crackle like heat lightning through the rest of the night.