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Like lightning, Bolt sets record in Olympic 200m

(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-08-21 07:12

BEIJING - Arms churning high, face twisted in pain as he sprinted toward the finish line, Usain Bolt kept glancing at the clock. The win in the Olympic 200 meters was a given, his second gold medal of the Beijing Games assured. This was now about a world record. About racing against history.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt celebrates winning the gold in the men's 200-meter final during the athletics competitions in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympics in Beijing, Wednesday, August 20, 2008. [Agencies]

Showing just what he can do when he goes all out start to finish, Bolt forged the greatest race ever run Wednesday night at the Bird's Nest, heaving his chest toward the finish line -- not simply to beat someone for the gold, but to become a part of track's glorious, and sometimes troubled, lore.

He finished in 19.30 seconds to break Michael Johnson's 12-year-old world record, one of the most venerable in the books.

"I just blew my mind and blew the world's mind," Bolt said.

Insane, Usain.

Officially, he won by an astounding 0.66 second over American Shawn Crawford, the defending Olympic champion. Crawford won the silver medal when Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles, who had finished 0.52 behind Bolt, was disqualified after a US protest for running out of his lane. "It feels like a charity case," Crawford said.

Either way, it was about four body lengths, the biggest margin in an Olympic 200.

American Walter Dix was awarded the bronze medal when the third man across the line, teammate Wallace Spearmon, also was DQ'd for leaving his lane.

Footnotes to history.

Bolt added the 19.30 -- 0.02 better than Johnson's old mark -- to the 9.69 he ran the 100 four nights before when he hot-dogged the final 20 meters to set the world record.

Everyone thought he could've done better in the 100 had he run hard the whole way, but the 200 has always been Bolt's favorite, the one he spent his life on, and this time he saved the showboating for after the race.

"I've been dreaming of this since I was yea high," Bolt said. "So it means a lot more to me actually than the 100 means."

After the unrelenting effort with a slight headwind in his face, Bolt sprawled out on the ground, arms and legs outstretched, basking in the roar of the Bird's Nest crowd and the glow of becoming, quite possibly, the greatest sprinter ever.

Bolt's name now goes above, or at least beside, every great sprinter to ever put on spikes.

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