London Day Nine: The Bolt Report

In the end, the result was beyond doubt. One of the greatest 100 metres fields of all time, but Usain Bolt still blitzed them.

Bolt took just 9.63 seconds. He beat Jamaican compatriot Yohan Blake by 0.14 of a second. Justin Gatlin 9.79. Tyson Gay 9.80, Ryan Bailey 9.88, Richard Thompson 9.98. How must it feel to race 100 metres under ten seconds and still come seventh?

And then there was Asafa Powell who broke down and still finished in 11.99 seconds while decelerating. Catch this footage of the race on Deadspin while you can.

Here's the official results page from the quite excellent London2012.com website.

[more links and reports on the mens 100m final to be added here once the Monday papers are out]

Some other quick highlights from Sunday:

• Oscar Pistorius bowed out of the 400 metres competition in the semi-final. Finished last, but semi winner Kirani James swapped bibs with him after the race. Oscar will be back blade-running for South Africa in the 4x400 later in the week. And, of course, at the Paralympics;
• Andy Murray beat Roger Federer to give Great Britain gold in the men's singles at the tennis. Williams, S and Williams, V gold for Team USA in the women's doubles, while Mirinyi and Azarenka took the women's doubles to give Belarus its second gold medal of these Olympics;
• women's boxing made its debut. Much as I disagree with boxing as an Olympic sport, it is an important moment to see the women share the stage with the men;
• Malaysia came within a whisker of its first-ever gold medal when Lee Chong Wei lost the third set of the men's singles badminton final 21-19 to China's Lin Dan, who repeated his Beijing success. I do hope that, despite its scandals of the past week, badminton is not the sport axed from the 2020 Games.

And catching up on some of Saturday's action, when Rosannagh MacLennan became Canada's first (and so far, only) gold medal of London 2012 in the women's individual trampolining. They're still behind Australia on the overall medal count, despite being equal in gold.

And speaking of gold, Kazakhstan won their 6th when Olga Rypankova jumped 14.98 metres in the women's triple jump. That's 6 gold 0 silver 0 bronze - four of which were in the weightlifting. Could you please all stand for the real National Anthem of Kazakhstan: