BEIJING — It's 1:30 a.m. and the world's fastest man is in a partying mood. Jamaican dancehall music blares from the speakers of the dance club, and Usain Bolt is already glistening with sweat.

Photographers press in around Bolt, who is rocketing to fame as fast as he sped along the 100-meter and 200-meter Olympic track, smashing world records.

For a moment, the photographers press a little too close. Bolt grabs the microphone, calls the Deejay to quiet the music and pleads: "You may be able to take some pictures but right now we just wanna dance. Give us two hours. We just ask for two hours."

Cheers go up from the Jamaicans in the crowd, and soon Bolt is shaking and shimmying to dancehall rap star Elephant Man, smiling broadly and arching back in his trademark gesture of glee and celebration, the same kind of flamboyant move that keeps drawing reproving remarks from International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge.

But Bolt won't be tamed. While Michael Phelps won an unprecedented eight gold medals for swimming, claiming title as a top Olympian of all time, the 22-year-old Bolt takes another trophy as the iconic champion of fun, reveling in his celebrity and showing the crowd how to enjoy life.

At a news conference later Sunday, Rogge was asked again about criticism he made of Bolt's gestures and dance steps after winning the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes.

"I'll repeat what I have said: He should show more respect for his opponents. But I also said in the same way that he was a young man of 22. He has time to mature," Rogge said.

Earlier in the week, Rogge, a patrician Belgian surgeon who once sailed yachts in the Olympic Games, suggested that Bolt's "showboating" did not display "the spirit of the Olympic ideal." He suggested Bolt should shake hands with losing sprinters, and rebuffed Bolt's gestures after crossing the finish line. "It was perceived as 'catch me if you can.' You don't do that."

For his part, Bolt said flamboyant fun on the field is a part of who he is.

"I talked to the other athletes, these guys, and most of them are okay with it," Bolt said during a promotion for Puma Saturday in Beijing. "I try to enjoy myself at all times. That's how I stay relaxed. That's who I am and I won't change."

The "showboating" that Bolt displayed in the Bird's Nest on Aug. 16th for the 100-meter dash and again Aug. 20 in the 200-meter dash went beyond draping a Jamaican flag over his shoulders. He took off his golden spikes and kissed them, swayed to reggae music from the stands, did a shaky-leg waggle dance, and opened his arms in a gesture that some interpreted as mocking his opponents. He also cocked back in a stance seemingly of an archer shooting into the stands.

Bolt, who turned 22 on Thursday, said he thinks spectators want to sense of what kind of athlete he is.

"The fans . . . also come out to see what you're like, your personality," Bolt said. "I don't see any problem with it because a lot of people really enjoy watching me just performing. So I'll stay the way I am because that's my personality."

Puma, the German shoe company that trails larger competitors Nike and Adidas, seems to agree that Bolt should do whatever he pleases after becoming one of the most recognizable faces of the Beijing Games.

Puma CEO Jochen Zeitz announced before the crowd of fans in the club that his company had bought a fully loaded BMW M3 dream car that would be waiting for Bolt on his return to Jamaica.

News media in Bolt's home island of Jamaica dismissed Rogge's criticism.

"The 'Bolt needs to grow up' mutterings of Olympic boss Jacques Rogge smack of the sour grapes resentment of a dried-up old man jealous of the exuberance of youth," columnist Kevin O'Brien Chang wrote Sunday in the Jamaica Gleaner, the island's largest newspaper.

Another Kingston daily, the Jamaica Observer, said in an editorial Sunday that the behavior the IOC chief "sees as unseemly, disrespectful and immature" from Bolt is part of "the face of Jamaica we like to sell our tourists, whom we greet with song, dance and unbridled joy as opposed to a stiff upper lip, meaningless small talk and other diplomatic gestures of insincerity."

It went on to quote a line from a song by reggae legend Bob Marley: "We are what we are, that's the way it's going to be."