Athletics: Bolt's record surge

Speed king chops huge chunk off his own record

Last updated: 17th August 2009   Subscribe to RSS Feed

<b>Athletics:</b> Bolt's record surge

Bolt: New record

Jamaica's Usain Bolt smashed the 100 metres world record on his way to claiming the world title in Berlin.

Bolt, 22, raced to victory in 9.58 seconds. American Tyson Gay, the 2007 world champion, clocked 9.71 to take silver and Jamaican Asafa Powell claimed the bronze.

The triple Olympic champion stormed to victory, comfortably beating the mark of 9.69secs he set at the Beijing Olympics last year.

Defending champion Gay set an American record of 9.71 to claim the silver with former world record holder Powell third in 9.84.

Great Britain's Dwain Chambers was sixth in 10.00, a season's best for the 31-year-old.

In the semi-finals, Bolt had shrugged off two false starts - the second of which saw Britain's Tyrone Edgar disqualified - to breeze into the final.

Bolt was guilty of the first false start, which meant any athlete guilty of another would be disqualified.

But after Edgar had committed that second misdemeanour and left the track, Bolt was quickly out of his blocks and almost as quickly began easing down to a brilliant time of 9.89.

That indicated something special was on the cards and the Jamaican superstar duly delivered, powering out of the blocks at the first time of asking in the final and seizing control of the race within 30m.

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