The world's fastest man Usain Bolt led his Bolt All-Stars to victory on the opening night of the inaugural Nitro Athletics teams event in Melbourne on Saturday. The world record holder for the 100m and 200m sprints led the Bolt All Stars - including athletes from Jamaica, the USA and Kenya - against teams representing Australia, England, New Zealand, Japan and China.
The 30-year-old Jamaican sprint star ran in the final event on the programme, the 4x100m mixed relay, featuring two male and two female athletes from each team, as did fellow Jamaican Olympicc gold medallist Asafa Powell With their captain running the unfamiliar second leg, handing over to American Jenna Prandini, the Bolt All Stars won that race to notch up their fourth outright win of the night and finish with a total of 1080 points.
"It was just a wonderful night. I was just enjoying myself from the start to the end," Bolt said. "Everybody was just having fun. Everybody was trying to support their teammates - going over to the long jump, to the javelin - that's something were not really used to."
The Australian team won three of the 12 events to sit second with 1050 points. The two teams finished equal first in two other events while Australia's Kurtis Marschall also tied for first place with China's Xue Changrui in the men's pole vault. New Zealand won the other two events, while China finished third on the points table with 845.
"At the start (of the night) I was a little bit worried. We started kinda slow and I was talking so much smack that everyone was looking at me like 'you're losing'," Bolt said. "But we won at the end, so that's the key thing and I'm very happy with how everything turned out."
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