Usain Bolt of Jamaica ran a world record 9.69 in the 100m to win Olympic Gold in Beijing. Bolt stopped pumping his arms at about the 80m mark yet managed to better the world record in an event he just started competing in last year.
Bolt finished an astonishing two-tenths of a second ahead of silver medalist Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago. American Walter Dix won the bronze with a time of 9.91. Six men ran under 10 seconds in the final. I can only imagine what Bolt's time would have been had he kept his arms pumping for the full 100 meters.
Who could have predicted that Powell would finish 5th and that Gay would not even make the finals.
The 21-year old Bolt narrowly missed the Olympic record by 0.01 seconds in the semi-final as he clocked 9.85 running into a headwind, again gearing down approximately 20 meters from the line.
The anticipation about the men's 100m race at the Beijing Olympics had been building since last year. It was thought the the gold medal would be won by American Tyson Gay or Jamaicans Asafa Powell or Usain Bolt. No one could have predicted how the event would unfold.
In the months preceding the games, Bolt had broken the world record mark of 9.74 set by Powell in September 2007. Bolt lowered this mark to 9.72 in New York in June, the fifth time he had contested the distance. Yes that's right. Bolt had to make a deal with his coach in order to add the 100m to his race card. His specialty is the 200m. In New York, Gay placed second in 9.85.
Powell clocked a season personal best 9.88 in Sweden in June, in a race in which he beat Bolt.
In the US Olympic trials Gay won the 100m with a wind aided 9.68. Six days later Gay fell to the ground after suffering a hamstring cramp in the 200m quarterfinals. The question now was whether Gay would be 100% in time for the Beijing showdown.
Leading up to Beijing it's easy to see why all the attention was focused on these three athletes.