Weltklasse encore gives Bolt chance to take a bow

A final snapshot before leaving Beijing on Tuesday: a young Chinese man in the Forbidden City pulling a "bow and arrow" pose for the benefit of his camera-clicking girlfriend. A welcoming picture from Zurich yesterday, from the meeting hotel for the Weltklasse, the first stop on the post-Olympic track and field circuit: Ricky Simms, manager of Usain Bolt, the Jamaican phenomenon who famously struck the pose in the "Bird's Nest" stadium, clutching a giant polythene bag at the "welcome desk". Should it not have the word "swag" emblazoned across it? "Actually, it's Usain's laundry for the past week," Simms said, opening the bag for inspection.

"Do you want some of his dirty washing?" The girl on the welcome desk said they didn't normally take the athletes' laundry but, seeing as it was for Mr Bolt, maybe if there were a signed tee shirt or two... "No problem; three signed tee shirts," Simms said. The deal was sealed but the genial young Irishman who manages the world's fastest man, and fastest-growing sporting phenomenon, still had to fill in a form itemising every piece of clothing. Presumably it was to be dried on fast spin.

Simms, a native of County Donegal, is a director of Pace Sports Management, whose headquarters is in the south west of London at Teddington. The company has some 85 athletes on its books. At the start of the year Simms spent much of his time resolving the plight of Kenyan athletes caught up in the tribal warfare that followed the country's disputed general election result. Now, his most celebrated client having smacked the bullseye of three gold medals and three world records in Beijing, his time is taken up in attempting to keep on top of "Boltmania!" as the front page headline in the local Blick am Abend put it yesterday.

Since arriving in Zurich on Monday, he has been on a whirlwind of public appearances with his client – his sincerely grateful client. "Ricky, he's the greatest," Bolt said. "He's the best. He's done everything for me. He makes sure I'm comfortable, and he stuck with me when things weren't going very well. I give thanks to him."

Tonight in the Letzigrund Stadion a sold-out 26,000 crowd will be giving thanks that the Lightning Bolt will be making his first post-Beijing strike on their track. The question that they, and the watching global TV audience will be asking, is whether Bolt can make it four world records in a fortnight. The 22-year-old runs in the 100m, the event in which he clocked 9.69sec with his brakes on in Beijing.

His coach, Glen Mills, has suggested that he would have run "at least 9.52sec" had he maintained his speed to the finish line. "I don't know how fast I can go," Bolt said, shrugging his shoulders. "I'm really not bothered about that. I don't run to break world records. I run to win." Of the seven rivals he beat in the Olympic final, only Asafa Powell will be absent. He runs in the 100m at the Aviva British Grand Prix at Gateshead on Sunday.