A few seconds later and the gold had changed, inexorably, to silver. "When I took the baton, I was thinking 'run, run, run for my life,'" said Bailey. "But Usain Bolt is a monster."

The man who brought Jamaica home on that occasion in a world record of 36.84sec made one of his last extended media appearances yesterday in the aptly named Salle de la Mer in Monaco's Fairmont Hotel, before one of his last competitive outings in tomorrow night's International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Diamond League meeting here.

As the 30-year-old Jamaican sporting idol sat with the press, and the Mediterranean, before him - his baseball hat bearing an A-Team logo, his t-shirt boasting a golden self-image - all of the questions he was asked were really just the same big question: "Are you still a monster?"

One response effectively answered that. "I'm always expecting to win," he said. "The moment you doubt there's no point showing up."

That's the thing about Bolt. He's always talked the talk, and then he's always walked the walk. Nobody who saw him out manoeuvre and unnerve Justin Gatlin to win the last world 100m title in Beijing, on the back of a season almost ruined by injury, would ever rule out the possibility of him ending his stellar career on a suitable high at next month's IAAF World Championships in London.

The US athlete finished that 2015 season with the top five 100m times, his best being 9.74. But the sixth-best time, 9.79, retained the world 100m title for Bolt, who had only managed his first sub-10sec timing of the season a month before the final.

Bolt said he "would like to dip under 10 seconds" in the Stade Louis II tomorrow night. So far he has managed times of 10.03, putting him 24th in this year's rankings, and, at the Ostrava meeting on June 28, 10.06.

But the relatively good news, as he pointed out, was that there was no Gatlin figure streaking away into the distance this year. Canada's Rio 2016 bronze medallist Andre de Grasse has a hugely wind-assisted 9.69 clocking, but the fastest legal time run this year is 9.82, run early in June by then US college runner Christian Coleman.

Bolt's some-time training partner Yohan Blake ran 9.90 to win the Jamaican title on June 23. But the multiple champion gives off a clear vibe that there is nothing out there to scare him, especially now his longtime problem of curvature of the spine, requiring constant treatment, has just received two weeks of dedicated treatment from Dr Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfahrt, Munich's medic to the stars, sporting or otherwise.

"No-one is really running fast at the moment," he said. "I really can't say why. The only thing I've noticed is the guys over the years who have really competed like me, Tyson [Gay] and Asafa [Powell], and all these guys - we're just getting older. So just the young crop is coming up now. I guess they'll take time to mature.

"The girls have really outperformed us over the past three years. They've really stepped up and have been running some fast times. It's been really competitive. I take my hat off to the girls for really competing at a higher level. I think we're just getting old.

"There's always a good field here, and lots of guys have been under 10 seconds so far this season. It would be good to dip under 10 seconds. But I'm here to execute a good race, to work on a few things, to get myself perfect for when the big race comes, and that's in three weeks' time."

Bolt said he had missed weeks of training following the death of his "good friend" Germaine Mason, the 2008 Olympic high jump silver medallist, in a motorbike accident on April 20.

He added: "My back is not perfect, but I can train, which is the key thing. I'm training much better now. Over the next two weeks, it should be fine."

So. A monster still, even if a sadder, wiser monster?

I suggested to him that he was a bit like the Williams sisters in tennis, only tending to dip in and out of the season before swooping for prey at the end of it. He didn't disagree.

"It's all about the Championship," he replied. "It's never about one-off runs. When me and my coach have had discussions, he has always tried to impress upon me to focus on what is important, which is the Olympics or the World Championships. That's just how I have been. The most important thing that's going on is always the Championships."

Seven months earlier, as he had sat in the same room on the eve of the World Athletes' Awards ceremony, Bolt highlighted his first 4x100m victory, at the 2008 Beijing Games, as one of the most exciting moments of his career - a victory that, even as he spoke, was in the process of being annulled because of a retrospective doping positive for his colleague Nesta Carter.

But the team thing excites Bolt. 

He mentioned it again when asked about his plans for the future in athletics, referring to the Nitro Atheltics event - in which he secured a stake - that attempted to shake the format up when it took place in Melbourne early this year, introducing new events. And creating a strong team ethic.

"I think our sport needs to change and try some different things," he said. "I really enjoyed the team spirit of that event, and I think that’s the way track and field should go."

For now, though, it is the small group of people who have worked with him over the years that he is putting his trust in.

"People have counted me out in past years, but I said the team I have always come through for me," he said.

Just one more heave required...