Did Usain Bolt clinch a new world record and a gold medal as many predicted in the 200m that included defending Olympic champion Shawn Crawford of the USA?
Yes he did. Bolt finished in 19.30 seconds to break Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old world record, one of the most venerable in the books.
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 U.S. 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.
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.
He became the first man to win the 100-200 double at the Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984, and the first man to hold both records simultaneously since Donald Quarrie — the 1970s Jamaican star whom Bolt said he always wanted to pattern his running after.
He gets mentioned in the same breath with Johnson, as well as Jesse Owens and any of the other six men to complete the Olympic 100-200 double. Nobody other than Johnson had ever run a 200 in under 19.6 and nobody had broken 9.7 in the 100 before Beijing.
Bolt has done both, the only man ever to break the world record in both sprints in the same Olympics.
Visit www.nbc.com for more details on listings and schedules for the Track and Field events for the 2008 Bejiing Olympics.
Information from the Associated Press contributed to this report.