First comes the headline. Usain Bolt will retire from athletics in 2017, with the World Championship 100 metres final in London pencilled in as his last individual race.
But then comes the story behind the headline. The desire to protect what he refers to as his ‘legacy’. The desire to sign off at the top, like Sir Alex Ferguson did when he secured one more Premier League title. ‘Exactly,’ he says, his eyes lighting up.
If he likes the comparison with Ferguson, a man he knows and admires enormously, Bolt also wants to be remembered as one of the greatest athletes the world has seen.
As someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with his own sporting heroes.
Ask him to identify his personal top three and he lists ‘Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan and Michael Johnson’.
But victory in Rio next year, to become the first man to win three consecutive 100m titles — never mind a possible treble in the 200m and sprint relay — could elevate him to a status alongside Ali.
If Ali was the greatest athlete of the 20th century, a great showman as well as the fiercest of competitors, could Bolt make an early claim for the 21st century crown?
He interrupts the initial question. ‘If you win in Rio,’ I begin to say. ‘Which I will,’ he declares. I finish by asking him if he would like to be placed on the highest pedestal.
‘That would be great,’ he says. ‘That would be awesome. That’s what I work for. Over the years I have said I want to become a legend. I want to be remembered as one of the greatest sportsmen ever.’
After winning his second gold at the London Olympics in 2012, Bolt encouraged the hundreds of reporters crammed into the stadium’s press auditorium to ‘bask in his glory’.
He burst out laughing a split second later, having already performed his own ‘drum roll’ as he stepped on to the stage.
On and off the track, Bolt was electric that night. As engaging an athlete as any on the planet and here, on the 30th floor of an office building in New York’s Times Square, he is no different. Every interview, like every race, is a performance; another opportunity to entertain.
‘I try to make people laugh and enjoy everything I do,’ he says.
No sooner had he arrived than he was clowning around for the cameras.
Bolt is funny. He hammers Louis van Gaal for the tactical approach he’s trying to employ at Manchester United, but does so in a manner that perhaps only the egotistical Dutchman will find offensive.
Invited to give his view on Van Gaal’s ‘philosophy’, Bolt speaks the language of the frustrated football fan; even if his words might yet spark another print run of tactical hand-out sheets.
He is much the same when he then reveals how he jokingly urged the hierarchy of his chief sponsor, Puma, to abort their plans to sign a huge kit deal with Arsenal.
‘I was like “bosses, can we talk about this?” I told them I’m not going to do any shoots with Arsenal kit on. I told them “don’t even ask!”’
But there is a more serious side, and it reveals itself when the conversation switches to that legacy. He undergoes something of a transformation when he discusses what matters most to him.
There is a subtle change to his deep Jamaican accent, and a shift in his seating position. When he’s messing around he sits back, almost horizontal, and stretches those telescopic legs under the table.
When he’s talking about personal ambition he sits more upright, tensing those powerful shoulders by gripping the arms of his chair.
‘Motivation can be a bit tough,’ he says. ‘I’ve discussed it with my coach. We find different things to keep me motivated. But the thing that drives me is a desire to protect my legacy.
‘It just takes one championship for people to start writing “well, he’s not that good now”. I have to protect my legacy and make sure that never happens.’
Rio seems like the perfect denouement. He will turn 30 on the last day of the Games, possibly the possessor of nine Olympic sprint golds, three world records and countless other titles. He was the first man, remember, to win the 100m and 200m in world-record times in Beijing in 2008.
‘That was the initial plan (to sign off after Rio),’ he says. ‘But my sponsor has asked me to go on for another year; to 2017 and London. But I’ll be doing one event, the 100. I’ve already discussed it with my coach. I can concentrate on that, and on retiring on a winning note.’
He wants to retire having run faster than he managed in Berlin in 2009, when he was in the form of his life and ran the two races — over the 100m and 200m — that remain his world-record times.
Watch those performances and it is difficult to find fault with them. His starts are superb, his pick-up astonishing, and none of the easing-up we saw at the Olympics 12 months earlier. That 6ft 5in frame of sprinting perfection runs through the line on both occasions. 9.58 and 19.19.
Bolt dismisses the suggestion that he ran the perfect race in the 100. ‘You’d be surprised if you talked to my coach, the things he has said.
‘I remember the first time I broke the world record, here in New York. I said “woah, that was the perfect race”. He said “no”. Then I thought I’d run the perfect race in Berlin, and he said “no” again. Coaches see things we don’t see. He saw little things in Berlin that could be adjusted. He thinks there is definitely room for improvement.
‘I remember at the Olympics, in London, I was saying I wanted to get a good start. And he told me to stop worrying about the start. “You’re not a good starter,” he said. ‘You’ve had one good start in your lifetime, in Berlin. So get over it.”
‘He told me to just do what I do. That I’d still be OK.’
He blames his ‘failure’ to improve on his times of 2009 on the niggling injuries that have troubled him since that season.
He says a nagging hamstring problem has now been resolved with surgery, stating that the secret of his success in 2009 was back-to-back injury-free seasons.
‘The two seasons I had that were perfect were 2008 and 2009,’ he says. ‘My main aim now is to stay injury free this season so I go into Rio in peak form; at my best. Because in the past I’ve suffered these setbacks.’
So could he yet go faster than 9.58? ‘Well, it takes races,’ he says. ‘But if everything goes well this season... in my life anything is possible. If I can get myself in good shape, it should be wonderful this season.
‘I live for competition. I thrive on competition. I live to compete against the best.
‘It means a lot when you beat the best. I remember when I won in Beijing, people were saying how Tyson (Gay) wasn’t there.
‘So for me the World Championship the following year, when everyone was there, that was good.’
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