The crowd, big and enthusiastic enough to generate Olympic flashbacks, was another matter.

“It felt the same,” he said of 2012. “The only thing that is different is I see a lot more Jamaicans in the crowd, which I’m happy about and I just want to make them proud so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Bolt has played possum and prevailed many times before. Will his luck run out before his rivals run out of time?

“They’ll want to be the ones to hand him a loss on his way out, and they see that there is a little bit of a chink in the armor at this point,” said Michael Johnson, the former American sprint champion working here for the BBC. “Bolt comes into this championship much more vulnerable than he has been in any previous championship based on his time this year: one sub-10 second and it’s only 9.95. But at the same time, the field isn’t very good this year.”

The American Christian Coleman, who is the reigning N.C.A.A. champion and world’s fastest man in 2017, did look dangerous on Friday, winning his heat in 10.01 while easing up in the final 20 meters. But he and the others will get just one crack at Bolt in an individual event. Bolt is running only the 100 and the 4-by-100 relay with Jamaica, next Saturday, at his farewell meet.

“I think it’s going to be the same thing we’ve seen in the past,” Johnson said. “We’ll see some people close to him and see people run impressive times in other heats. But when it comes to the final, I challenge anyone to bet against him no matter what they see in the rounds.”

Bolt’s decision to skip the 200, which also allows him to skip a potential duel with the South African star Wayde Van Niekerk, keeps this from being quite a full-circle moment.