I predicted over a year ago that somebody would break 9.7 in the 100. I was right, but I thought Powell would do it. He choked again and didn’t even medal. He did do better than Gay, who didn’t even make the finals.
Bolt won in 9.69, Richard Thompson was 2nd in 9.89, and Dix took the bronze in 9.91. Powell was fifth in 9.95.
Haven’t seen the video yet, but despite Bolt’s amazing time that was a pretty disappointing race for what we were expecting.
I don’t know if youtube will allow this video to stay up, but here it is:
EDIT: It’s gone. Just go to youtube and search for 2008 olympics 100 m, then sort by date and you might get lucky enough to see a video before it gets deleted.
That’s amazing. He had a mediocre start, and he shut it down with 25m to go and still finished in 9.69.
This guy has many records left in him before he’s done, and that shouldn’t be for a number of years.
http://www.nbcolympics.com/trackandfield/resultsandschedules/rsc=ATM001100/index.html
Check out the reaction times. .165 isn’t very good. Dix, Thompson, and Powell had over 3 hundredths on him.
Also note the wind. 0 m/s.
If Bolt runs a full race, gets a good start, and has a 1.8-2.0 m/s wind behind him, he is going to run an amazing time.
According to the track tables, a 2.0 m/s wind at that altitude would provide a .094 second advantage. Cut a couple hundredths off that reaction time. Train to get out of the blocks quicker, as even with a good reaction he is still slow out of the blocks, and he actually has the potential to run a legal 9.5.
Huzzah for my countryman Thompson.
Bolt is effing superhuman.