Jamaica’s Usain Bolt defended his 100metre Olympic title in comfortable fashion as he won gold in a time of 9.81 seconds in Rio on Sunday night.

The track superstar beat Justin Gatlin to gold, with the American finishing in a time of 9.89seconds, just ahead of Canada’s Andre de Grasse.

Bolt’s Jamaican team-mate Yohan Blake, who has struggled with injuries in recent years just missed out on a medal in fourth but only two of the competitors failed to run inside 10 seconds.

Bolt got off to a slow start and that did not help his world record attempt but his final 50m blew the field away in front of a packed crowd.

At the last two games he has won the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay and he will look to repeat that feat in what will be his final Olympic Games.

Speaking after his win, Bolt conceded he wanted to run faster but he immeiatedly turned his attention to the next few events. He told the BBC: “I’m really happy but I expected to go faster.

I’m just happy that I won and that’s the key thing. “After the semi-final I felt extremely good.

I wanted to run faster but with the turnaround time, we normally have two hours, but we had one hour 20 minutes, it was challenging.

This is what we train for. I told you guys I was going to do it. Stay tuned, two more to go.”

Bolt is the 1.10 favourite to win the 200m, while Gatlin can be backed at odds of 9.00 with Dafabet.