USAIN Bolt made himself the biggest star athletics has seen since Carl Lewis, annihilating the field in the men’s 100m final, running 9.69sec to break his own world record.
In one of the most extraordinary one-off performances seen at an Olympic Games, the rangy 196cm tall 21-year-old Jamaican sheared 0.03sec off his own record to win his country its first 100m men’s gold medal.
Bolt was laughing as he crossed the line as he was that far ahead of the chasing pack, with Trinidad’s Richard Thompson grabbing the silver medal in 9.89sec and American Walter Dix the bronze in 9.91sec.
“I’ve been training all year for this,” he said. “I could maybe go 9.60 the way I looked.”
The major disappointment of the final was the run of former world record-holder Asafa Powell, who finished fifth in 9.95sec.
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