For Bolt, Sunday’s victory carried both a sense of festivity and farewell. He will turn 30 next Sunday as the Rio Games end. He has said repeatedly that these will be his final Olympics.

He plans to retire next year after the world track and field championships in London, with one transcendent career goal remaining: to take his world record of 19.19 seconds at 200 meters below the 19-second barrier.

The 100 meters “has got to be the most universal event other than the long jump,” said David Wallechinsky, the president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, speaking of Sunday’s victory. “Everyone’s tried it at least once in their lives. To be the best in the Olympics three times in something that everyone has done at least once is incredible.”

When Bolt crossed the line Sunday, it was not with the same astonishment as that night eight years ago at the Beijing Games, when he was new to the public and to the 100 and he finished in 9.69 seconds, easing up and celebrating before the finish but still smashing his own world record.

Nor did Sunday’s performance match the wonder of the 9.58 that Bolt ran a year later to set the current 100 record at the 2009 world track and field championships in Berlin.