![]() If that was his plan, it was executed with perfection. I'll rest up as always, I need to rest up for the 200m."īolt had taken it easy in the semi-final, jogging to victory in an apparent attempt to save himself for a big effort in the main event. There'll be no partying for me ahead of Tuesday. "I came out here to do my best and I did what I had to do. It wasn't going to be an easy race but I had a perfect start and just went from there. "There was a big build up, great atmosphere. "It's a great time, a great feeling, I feel good in myself and I knew I could do it. I knew it was going to be a great race and I executed it," Bolt said. Jacobs’s winning time of 9.80 seconds was actually a hundredth of a second faster than the gold-winning time set by an aging Bolt in 2016, 3 but it is tied for just the 44th best all-time mark."I was feeling good after the semis. But Bolt’s world record of 9.58 seconds and his Olympic record of 9.63 seconds feel fairly secure. 2 Earlier at these Games, the Olympic record in the 100-meter backstroke was broken in three consecutive heats. Just Tuesday in Tokyo, the Olympic record in the men’s 400-meter hurdles was broken by all three of the medalists. In timed athletics, there can be an assumption that records need to be rewritten before the ink dries. American Tyson Gay broke the 9.7 barrier in 2009, and in 2012, Jamaican Yohan Blake also hit 9.69 - and they each did it in a race run without Bolt. We would expect times to be at their best when a once-in-a-generation talent like Bolt is tearing up the track, but his competitors during that era were faster, too, and not just when racing against him. From 2008, when Bolt first broke 10 seconds, through his final season in 2017, there were 13 times faster than that. The fastest time produced since Bolt retired has been 9.76 seconds, set in 2019 by U.S. Times in the 100-meters just haven’t reached the same echelon since the greatest sprinter of all time hung up his cleats. That legacy, though, is a bit slower than it used to be. ![]() At least for now, he is the heir to the Usain Bolt legacy. But he picked the perfect time to peak, clocking his three fastest times in successive runs in Tokyo: 9.94 seconds in the opening heat, 9.84 in the semis, 9.80 in the final.Īll three medalists - Jacobs, Kerley, De Grasse - ran personal bests in the final, but only the Italian took the crown of fastest man on the planet. Who could blame them? It’s uncertain that Jacobs would have even been in the field had the Olympics been held in 2020. Silver medalist Fred Kerley and bronze medalist Andre De Grasse intimated they essentially knew nothing about the 26-year-old converted long jumper - his Instagram handle is “ crazylongjumper” - who before 2021 hadn’t broken the 10-second barrier or registered a figure better than 200th all time. He wasn’t the only one surprised by the result in the men’s 100-meter final some sportsbooks had installed Jacobs at 20-to-1 odds before the Olympics and 8-to-1 odds entering the semis. But there was Italy’s Lamont Marcell Jacobs 1 on Sunday night, telling reporters, “I think I need four or five years to realize and understand what’s happening.” Rarer still is the bewildered champion who hails from a country with no record of producing an event finalist. Men’s Olympic sprints traffic heavily in machismo and self-assurance, so an incredulous victor is a rarity on the track. ![]() This article is part of our Tokyo Olympics series. ![]()
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