The world's fastest man extended his speedy 6-foot frame to its fullest on Sunday in a 4x100-meter relay race and led his Jamaican team to a win in world record time. On Saturday, Usain Bolt confirmed his dominance of the sprints when he picked up a gold medal in the 200 meters at the 13th IAAF World Athletics Championships at Daegu Stadium in Daegu, South Korea. "I said, 'Why not give my all.' I kept saying: 'I can do this. I can do this'."
Bolt ran the fourth-fastest 200 meters race ever recorded on Saturday to win gold. On Sunday, his relay team, which already held the 4x100 meter world record, blazed to a new fastest time of 37.04 seconds. (Including handoffs — which Team USA botched during the final stretch of the race — this means that each member of Team Jamaica sprinted 100 meters in less than 9.3 seconds.)
Bolt has earned a reputation for outrunning his opponents by such great lengths that he eases up approaching the finish line and rarely goes all out. He earned three sprinting gold medals at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and three more at the 2009 world championships. He drew worldwide headlines late last week when he was disqualified from the 100-meter final for a false start.
Even though he was leading the final leg of the 4x100 relay race by at least 20 meters Sunday, Bolt lunged across the tape as if his career's validation depended on it. The time beat Jamaica's record of 37.10 seconds set in Beijing. "Anything is possible," Bolt, 25, exclaimed afterward. Get ready, then, for a jolt of "greased lightning" at the 2012 Summer Games in London.
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