Usain Bolt crosses the finish line in the men’s 100m final, ahead of countryman Yohan Blake and American Justin Gatlin. Bolt successfully defended his Olympic title with a time of 9.63 seconds. Photograph: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images
Usain Bolt became only the second man in Olympic history to take a second gold medal in the men's 100 metres final on Sunday night. With a time of 9.63 seconds – a new Olympic record – he beat Yohan Blake, his fellow Jamaican and the latest pretender to his throne, into second place in a race in which the first seven runners went under 10 seconds.
In a contest that also shaped up as a battle between Jamaica and theUnited States, the bronze medal was taken by Justin Gatlin, the champion of 2004. Gatlin was the first of a trio of Americans whose high hopes were demolished by their rivals from the Caribbean.
Thanks to Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins and one or two other local favourites, Bolt may never become the face of London 2012 in the way that he dominated Beijing. But there was still a sense, as there always is with the final of the men's 100 metres, that this was the focal point of the Olympic Games, the moment most likely to produce a feat of superhuman dimensions.
As the eight runners stepped into their blocks, the Olympic stadium seethed with a combination of tension and sheer glee. Two million people were said to have applied for tickets, and the 80,000 present knew how lucky they were to witness a race that turned out to fulfil their expectations.
Four years ago, when he burst into the global consciousness as an unpredictable 21-year-old, Bolt loped his way to a world record time of 9.69, which many believed could have been a tenth of a second faster had he not spent the last 20 metres beating his chest and looking for the faces of his friends in the crowd. In Berlin a year later he took the record down to 9.58, and that time he was trying.
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