BEVERLY HILLS, USA (AP) — Usain Bolt said he was kidding when he said “all the tutoring stopped” after training partner Yohan Blake ran the 200 metres in 19.26 seconds earlier this month.

“I was laughing when I actually said it,” Bolt said yesterday.

Blake’s time in a meet at Brussels was the second fastest 200 in history, just 0.07 seconds off Bolt’s world record.

Bolt was in California to raise US$100,000 for his foundation and talked about his false start at the world championships and his plans between now and next summer’s London Olympics.

Bolt said he believes people are looking for controversy.

He and Blake are countrymen, and some believe it’s Blake who’s Bolt’s toughest competition in London.

Bolt said it wasn’t true.

“Everything’s right with me and Blake,” he said before calling Blake “the future of Jamaica. He’s the one. … If he beats me, so be it. I don’t want him to.”

Bolt said no one in particular is his biggest rival and that he doesn’t focus on any single competitor.

“First they said it was Tyson Gay, and then they said it was Asafa Powell. Then all of a sudden, they said it’s Blake,” Bolt said.

“You can’t focus your energy on one person, and then they drop out. What do you do? I focus on the seven people in the lanes with me.”

Bolt also looked back at last month’s default out of the 100 metres in Daegu, South Korea, for jumping the gun, an event that caused him to rethink the sport’s policy of disqualifying anyone who false starts.

He said it never was a problem for him because he had never done it before.

Now, “they really should go back to one false start and charge it to the field. It’s easier. Somebody makes one mistake and everybody can relax.”

Up next for Bolt is a vacation to Las Vegas this weekend, a place he has never visited.

Training for the Olympics begins next month. Once the Olympics come, he has a goal: not just run fast enough to win the gold medal, but to amaze and leave everyone awestruck.

“I want to go to the Olympics and wow people,” he said. “I want to be a legend.”