OpinionSelfie mania grips the Athletes’ Village, but Hong Kong Olympians avoid the Bolt brouhaha

Usain Bolt is keeping a low profile at these Games.

The thousands of members of the media here are desperate to catch the fastest man on earth as he sets his targets on a ‘triple-triple’ of gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m, having bagged the lot at Beijing 2008 and 2012.

And most of the 10,000 or so athletes here are equally keen for some face time, albeit to grab a selfie rather than an update on the state of his hamstring.

WATCH: Highlights of delegations’ parade and lighting of the Olympic cauldron

You wonder if he ever looks back wistfully at 2008, when he could stroll the Athletes’ Village in Beijing’s Chaoyang district in relative anonymity – until the 17th August at least, the morning after he electrified sport in just 9.69 seconds.

Eight years later and Bolt is surely the man with the single most blinding star wattage here in Rio.

Who compares? Michael Phelps is the most successful Olympian of all time, but there’s still large swathes of the world population who wouldn’t look once at him in the street, never mind twice.

The US basketball team are globally famous, but Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant are not in the same league as LeBron, who needs only one name and is not here. Besides, the pampered NBA stars are living on a luxury cruise liner called the Silver Cloud moored some 30 kilometres away from the hoi polloi in the village.