Usain Bolt tilted his head backward and screamed. He plaintively raised his palms to the sky, tugged hard on his shirt, then angrily ripped the No. 6 sticker off his right hip.

It had the look of an unthinkable loss in the Olympic 200 meters.

But there’s only one opponent that can really beat Bolt: Time.

The Jamaican superstar romped in what he says is likely his last Olympic individual race Thursday night, but finished in 19.78 seconds, .59 short of his own world record — the one he said he really wanted to break.

“I wanted to run a faster time,” said the sprinter, who turns 30 on the night of the closing ceremony. “I knew it was going to be hard to break the world record, because I could tell by my legs. When I came off the corner, my legs decided, ‘Listen, we’re not going to go any faster.’”

Hard to argue with a win, though, and Bolt has Olympic gold medal No. 8, and a third straight 200 title to go with the same trifecta in the 100. His run for gold No. 9 comes Friday in the 4×100 relays.

All good stuff. But that expression as he crossed the finish line told the real story.