Olympics Day 12: No Bolt Pun Here
Michael Phelps won eight gold medals in Beijing. I wouldn't have believed that there could have been a serious discussion about whether he has been the star of the Olympics, but Usain Bolt has made that happen.
After his victory in the 100-meter dash, where he broke the world record despite celebrating for the last 10 meters, people wondered what would have happened if he had run the entire race at full speed.
This morning, we found out.
Bolt destroyed the 200-meter final, winning by several meters and breaking Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record of 19.32 - a mark that people thought might last for another decade. Bolt was so dominant in running 19.30 that the second- and third-place finishers were both eventually disqualified for running out of their lanes while trying in vain to catch up.
So Bolt joins sprinters like Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis by winning the 100 and 200 in the same Olympics, but he becomes the first to do the double while setting world records in each event. No other sprinter has even held both world records at the same time since another Jamaican, Donald Quarrie, in the mid-1970s.
So who is the brightest star of Beijing? I still think it is Phelps, because of the awesome difficulty of his feat. He had to perform in eight events, swimming four different strokes, and set a world record in seven of them. Like Bolt, he won races with amazing ease, but he also had to find a way to dig inside himself and win a race by a fingernail. Bolt hasn't had to do that, although he could still pull something off in the 4x100 relay.
Either way, they are both going to be remembered for a long, long time.
RealSports Medal Count
1) United States 24-22-26=212
2) China 26-14-15=187
3) Great Britain 15-9-8=110
4) Russia 12-11-15=108
5) Australia 11-10-12=97
6) South Korea 8-9-5=72
7) France 4-11-13=66
Germany 8-5-6=61
9) Japan 8-4-8=60
10) Italy 6-7-7=58
11) Ukraine 5-4-5=42
x) MichaelPhelpsLand 8-0-0=40
12) Holland 3-4-4=31
13) Cuba 1-6-5=28
14) Jamaica 4-2-1=27
15) Spain 3-3-2=26
16) Kenya 2-4-2=24
17) Canada 2-3-5=24
18) Belarus 2-2-8=24
19) New Zealand 3-1-5=23
20) Poland 2-4-1=23
Results include changes due to doping violations up to and including the women's heptathlon.