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Bolt of lightning strikes Beijing |
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By: KHALID A-H ANSARI IN BEIJING |
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Date:
2008-08-17 |
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Place: BEIJING |
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 A BOLT of lightning struck Beijing's "Bird's Nest" national stadium last night at 8.30 pm.
It singed the athletics track and, in a blistering world record time of 9.69 secs, anointed a Jamaican called Usain Bolt as the world's fastest man in the glamour event of the greatest sporting show on earth.
Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago finished second in a personal best time of 9.89 secs and Walter Dix (USA) third in 9.91 secs., also a personal best.
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| LAST LAUGH: Usain Bolt | Interestingly, all eight finalists were from the Caribbean or the US. Three - Bolt, Asafa Powell (fifth) and Michael Frater (sixth) were from Jamaica.
Two â Dix (third) and Darvis Patton (eighth) â come from the USA and the rest, Thompson (second - from Trinidad and Tobago), Churandy Martina (fourth â Netherlands Antilles), and Marc Burns (seventh â Trinidad and Tobago) from the West Indies.
Impressively relaxed at the start, Bolt (running in lane 3) triggered off to a bullet start and accelerated rapidly into the front at the 50-metre mark, then shot into a big lead, before slowing down and even turning back while thumping his chest in a gesture of victory seven metres from the finish.
Relaxed
It was a remarkably facile win in world record time and makes one wonder what Bolt's time might have been but for his cockiness.
In the psychological sparring in the run-up to the event, American sprinter Tyson Gay had said he was raring to go in the "hottest event in Olympic history" and said he expected a "real fast time".
Gay, who was confronting two Jamaicans intent on giving the Caribbean their first-ever Olympic sprint title, crashed out in the semi-final, finishing a disappointing fifth.
Twenty-one year old Bolt is 193m tall and weighs 76kg. |
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