9.58!

I have just checked my blog for last year and during the Olympics I wrote that: "Usain Bolt may well be the first man to break under 9.60 seconds"; I was right... I wonder how fast he could run; Usain Bolt is reported to have predicted under 9.50, it does not seem impossible.


I grew up watching 100m runners just about breaking 10 seconds to win Olympic or World Championship gold medals. I remember the excitement when Carl Lewis and Ben Johnson fought for gold running in the high 9.8s. Today at the World Athletics championships in Berlin Usain Bolt broke his own world record (set at the Beijing Olympics exactly a year ago) by 0.11 seconds, the largest margin this 100m world record has ever been broken by. Tyson Gay ran 9.71 for the silver medal and Asafa Powell 9.84 for the bronze. The top five runners all broke the magic (well it used to be) 10 second barrier and Britain's Dwain Chambers finished sixth in 10 seconds dead, so he has still to break the barrier. Just a reminder that Linford Christie won the 1992 Olympic gold in Barcelona with a time of 9.96.

Interestingly Usuan Bolt ran the 100m so fast that for the first time the holder of the 100m meter record is really the world's fastest man. Usually the fastest average speed is actually the holder of the 200m world record. This may be only temporary as Usain Bolt has that event in a few days time...