![]() He said it was worse than he let on, but refused to use it as a convenient excuse. And certainly not with a groin injury that he admitted to Saturday. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the one to do it, but I still have confidence I can do it one day.” It showed a human can take it to another level. “I’ve been telling you someone could run 9.5,” Gay said. Gay was complimentary of his rival in a race that lived up to the hype. No, he wanted off the track, but wasn’t allowed by an official. Standing back at the finish line, waiting for him to finish up, was Gay. Or about 19:50.42 longer than it took to run his 100. ![]() The entire victory lap took about 20 minutes. Next came pictures – lots of flashes popping – and hugs as Bolt greeted everyone who called his name – and they were numerous. Too bad the song wasn’t from rapper Akon, who wrote about the sprinter in a song, the lyric going, “Quicker than Usain Bolt, the fastest thing runnin’.” They even stopped midway down the track and did a little dance number. He grabbed a flag and did a victory lap with countryman Asafa Powell, who finished with the bronze (9.84). ![]() His face lit up as he spotted the digits “9.58” appear on the screen next to the track. Before crossing the line, he glanced to his right to check on Gay once – not in the picture – and then back at the clock. Unlike the Olympics, when he skidded from the blocks, Bolt burst out this time, opening a sizable lead on the field after 20 meters.įrom there, it could have been a stroll in the park. He is rewriting the record books and changing the face of track in another way – putting a smile on it.īefore climbing into the blocks, Bolt gave spectators a quick wave and did his trademark bow-and-arrow pose. It’s easy to see how Bolt became such a crowd favorite, unlike many of the stoic champions of the past. That will win every race in history except for today (and at the Olympics).” “I can’t imagine going 9.71 and not winning. “He’s like a created game person,” American Darvis Patton said. Bolt almost made that guy look like a genius. Now he has added the world championship, last won by Gay in 2007, to his Olympic title.Ī Stanford professor estimated he could’ve gone about 9.55 if he’d run full out through the line in Beijing. Bolt lives in Owens’ stratosphere now, having set the 100 world record three times and also owning the 200-meter record thanks to the 19.30 he ran in Beijing to break Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old mark. Then a group of athletes who were uninvited to the worlds by the country’s track officials because they didn’t participate in team training camp got reinvited at the request of international officials.īolt made everyone forget about that and showed, once again, what a great sport track can be when the focus is on the oval, not doping control and the meeting rooms.īolt ran his latest unforgettable race at Olympic Stadium in Berlin, the history-filled home of the 1936 Olympics where Jesse Owens became the world’s biggest track star. ![]() Most saw it as a welcome sigh of relief for a sport that needed some good news after years of doping and scandal.Įven this week, the Jamaican track team was making headlines for the wrong reasons – a complicated doping case. Some, like Jacques Rogge of the International Olympic Committee, viewed it as a sign of bad sportsmanship. The record came on the one-year anniversary of his 9.69 in Beijing, when Bolt shut his race down early, waving his arms and celebrating about 10 meters before he got to the line. “I know I said 9.4,” Bolt said, grinning. Yet those records always seem to find him. ![]()
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