USAIN BOLT

Bolt strikes twice, with a second WR
DQs move Americans into silver, bronze positions
By The Associated Press
Posted Wednesday, August 20, 2008 5:26 AM ET
BEIJING (AP) -- 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.
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Usain Bolt sets another world record in the 200m final. Americans Shawn Crawford and Walter Dix get silver and bronze, respectively.
This was now about a world record. About racing against history.
Showing just what he can do when he goes all out start to finish, Bolt forged the greatest race ever run Wednesday night under the hazy lights 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 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. (Official results)
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.
He became the first man to win the 100-200 double at the Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984.
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.
Bolt is simply a different kind of runner -- coiled power in his 6-foot-5 frame, supposedly too big for success in the 100, but certainly built to run the 200.
"It's his anatomy," said Renaldo Nehemiah, the former world record-holder in the 110-meter hurdles. "He's just blessed with an uncanny frame, an uncanny quickness, a huge competitive heart. And he is having a good time, which I think our sport sorely needs to see."
Indeed, track and field could use a breath of fresh air after years of bad news, bad characters and failed drug tests that have come close to turning the sport into second-tier Olympic viewing.