Reigning Olympic 200-metres champion Veronica Campbell-Brown believes female sprinters will continue to play second fiddle to the men until someone gets close to or breaks Florence Griffith-Joyner’s  world records.

Before a capacity crowd inside the Bird’s Nest Stadium last week, the Jamaican ran her heart out to clock a personal best of 21.74 seconds and defend her Olympic half-lap title, but was still a long way off the 20-year-old world record.

Her fellow countryman Usain Bolt was the highlight of the Olympics, blazing the track to set new world records in the 100 metres and 200 metres events.

“It’s a touchy subject, but if I should be honest, I really believe men get more attention in this sport,” Campbell-Brown told the broadcast media here. “It’s based on the fact that the world record in the 100m and 200m for men is reachable.

“For me, my PRs (personal records) are 10.85 and 21.74, which I just accomplished here and I only ran that once. It is hard for me to even think about the world record.”

Griffith-Joyner’s records are considered two of the most out-of-reach marks in track and field to date.

Michael Johnson’s previous 200 metres world record of 19.32 seconds was also once seen as impossible also until Bolt lowered it by .02 second in a headwind.

Campbell-Brown, however, said she believed Flo-Jo’s records were beyond her.

“It is beyond my reach. The [200m] world record is 21.34 and the 100m record is 10:49. How many females have even run 10.6 in the past 20 years since Flo Jo set that record?” Campbell-Brown contended.

“It’s disappointing to not get the respect that the males do because they are capable of breaking the record and people are excited to see them run because they know the possibility of breaking the record is close. I don’t have that luxury, and a lot of my competitors don’t have that luxury right now.”

BEIJING, China (CMC) - Jamaican Olympic hero Usain Bolt is not surprised by the number of raised eyebrows following his performances at the Beijing Olympics, but said he has nothing thing to worry about because he is clean.

Bolt turned the Olympics upside down with his three gallant performances, winning gold in the 100 metres and 200 metres in world record times. He ran the third leg of the sprint relay in which Jamaica also captured gold in World record time.

Bolt said he had been tested numerous times this season, with all the results returning negative.

“We’ve been tested a lot. I was tested four times before I even started running,” Bolt said, while speaking at an event put on by one if his sponsors, Puma.

“I have taken urine tests and blood tests. I have been tested after every competition,” he added.
He continued: “I have been tested so many times I lost track. And we’re okay with it.

We work hard and we perform well and we know we’re clean. Anytime they want to test us is okay with us.”

Bolt took the Olympics by storm, speeding to 9.69 seconds in winning the 100 metres before returning to clock a sensational 19.30 seconds to break American Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old 200m record and become the first double Olympic sprint champion in 24 years.

Former World and Olympic champion Linford Christie says double Olympic champion and world record-holder Usain Bolt would have still won the sprint double even if American champion Tyson Gay had been fully fit.

Gay won the sprint double at the World Championships in Osaka, last year but an injury at the United States trials in early July sidelined him and forced him to enter the Olympics without a single competitive race under his belt, and with lingering questions over his fitness.

“Gay is a good athlete and he would have pushed Bolt hard,” said Christie, the only man to have held the Olympic, World, European and Commonwealth 100m titles simultaneously.

“But I don’t think he would have beaten him, considering what Bolt achieved with such an ease. He was on a different planet altogether.”

Before his injury, Gay clocked 9.77 seconds and a wind-aided 9.68 seconds at the US trials, and would have been one of the favourites heading into the Olympics.

However, looking way off his best, Gay bowed out in the semi-finals of the 100 metres. He had earlier failed to qualify for the 200 metres after pulling up in the event at the US trials.

Christie, a Jamaica-born, British sprinter, said he was delighted with Bolt’s achievements at the Olympic Games which ended last weekend.

“I know Bolt since the age of 15 and at first look it struck me he is one for the future. He has the charisma to take athletics to a new level,” the now retired track star said.

He said the 22-year-old, who finished the Games with three gold medals and three world records, “has given a fresh lease of life for athletics” and backed him to becoming one of the greatest sprinters.

“It’s not easy for a junior to run 200 metres under 20 seconds but he managed to achieve this feat. If not for injuries, he would have blossomed a bit earlier, but the time away has in fact helped him,” the 48-year old said.

“He is a much better athlete now and is on his way to becoming one of the greatest.

“[Bolt's] arrival has given a fresh lease of life for athletics, which has been under cloud since the doping revelation from some top athletes over the last few years.”

The Jamaican men’s 4×100m relay team that consists of Asafa Powell (former 100m world record holder), Usain Bolt(current 100m world record holder), Nesta Carter and long time sprint sensation Michael Frater finished first in the finals of the 4×100m relays to claim the golden position with a world record breaking time of 37.10. There was almost no competition for the Jamaican super sprint team as they blew away the rest of the field and won by some estimated 15 meters. Jamaica was the favorite going into the finals but they proved to be more than that. With such an unspeakable performance the question is ask: where is the limit for Jamaica? Answer: No limits!!!!!!

Nesta Carter who did not get to participate in the 200m or the 100m rounds showed his commitment to Jamaica by rising to the occasion when duty calls and is now one of the 4 gold medalist. Michael Frater who came behind Asafa Powell in the 100m finals is now a proud gold medal holder as well, Frater is one of those athletes you can never hate. He is always there for Jamaica through thick and thin and we really respect that from him. Frater had his rein in the sprinting realm for Jamaica when sub 11 were the times to have, but he showed great deliverance at this year’s 2008 Olympics as he broke his personal best record in the sub 11 region.

We are all happy to see that Asafa can smile now with ease as he came through for Jamaica on the anchor leg. If Asafa ran the 100m finals the way he ran the anchor leg of the 4×100, there is no doubt in my mind that he and Bolt would be battling neck and neck for the 100m title. But as they say, that’s in the past. I am very happy to see Asafa bringing home a gold from this year’s Beijing Olympics because he truly deserves it. We all have our personal thoughts about him in the 100m but lets forget that and focus on the future, don’t pressure Asafa he is still the man that putted Jamaica on the map.

Jamaica has shown its strength to the world, and now many teams will go back to the drawing boards to try and beat us, there is only one problem with that, they can’t beat what is naturally in our blood and God given. Our little island of Jamaica is blessed and we should realize it. We have many of the elite athletes in track and field that proves to the world over and over; Jamaica a Numba One!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Melanie Walker took gold in the women’s 400m hurdler to beat out rival Sheena Tosta of the United States. Up to 300m Sheena Tosta looked good but Melanie Walkie who was the favorite coming into the race put out a great fight to surge pass Tosta in great Jamaican sprinting style. Tosta who ran out of lane 5 had the advantage of pacing Melanie Walker who ran out of lane 6. Melanie now joins the already outstanding performances for Jamaica and had now added her gold medal to bring up the gold medal count for our little island of Jamaica.

Jamaica has been dominating sprinting events since the beginning of the 2008 Beijing Olympics and has shown great talent and heart in all specific events.

Veronica Campbell who currently has the top 200m times in world continues “Jamaica’s dominance in the sprints” at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Veronica who did not make it for the 100m came back with vengeance to defend her 200m title that she won in the 2004 Olympics. Even though Veronica did not make the 100m she proved the saying “down but not out,” and she definitely showed heart. Allyson Felix who got second was no threat to Veronica, from the start of the gun Veronica was flying like air-Jamaica.

Kerron Stewart got third and has been doing well, being that this is her first Olympics. Sherone Simpson who has been battling injuries for several months now got sixth. The Jamaican sprint teams are looking positive for the 4×100 relays and hopefully will take gold in both women and men without a shadow of a doubt.

Go Jamaica, we are proud of you Veronica for bringing pride to our island. We love you.

Jamaican Usain Bolt, who competed in the 200-metre Olympic final yesterday, has been drug-tested at least 11 times in 2008, according to Nick Davies, a spokesman for the world track & field federation (IAAF).

Bolt was tested four times out-of-competition by the IAAF and three times in-competition, Davies said. He also has been tested four times by the International Olympic Committee - including three blood tests - ince he arrived to China, Davies said.

Davies said Bolt and fellow sprinter Asafa Powell are among the 22 elite Jamaican track & field athletes included in the IAAF’s targeted testing programme.

The IAAF spends US$2 million to US$3 million annually on the programme, Davies said, to ensure that athletes in nations such as Jamaica and Kenya that do not have national testing programmes get tested frequently.

Powell, Davies said, has been tested 13 times this year - six out-of-competition by the IAAF, three in-competition and four by the IOC.

Davies said IAAF medical officials assemble longitudinal profiles of the athletes’ blood work to look for abnormalities that suggest doping could be going on.

Bolt’s and Powell’s results “look OK,” Davies said. “If it didn’t, there would be massively targeted testing on them, simple as that.”

The win in the Olympic 200 meters was a given, his second gold medal of the Beijing Games assured.
Usain Bolt sets another world record in the 200m final. Americans Shawn Crawford and Walter Dix get silver and bronze, respectively.

This was now about a world record. About racing against history.

Showing just what he can do when he goes all out start to finish, Bolt forged the greatest race ever run Wednesday night under the hazy lights at the Bird’s Nest, heaving his chest toward the finish line — not simply to beat someone for the gold, but to become a part of track’s glorious, and sometimes troubled, lore.

He finished in 19.30 seconds to break Michael Johnson’s 12-year-old world record, one of the most venerable in the books.

“I just blew my mind and blew the world’s mind,” Bolt said.

Insane, Usain.

Officially, he won by an astounding 0.66 second over American Shawn Crawford, the defending Olympic champion. Crawford won the silver medal when Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles, who had finished 0.52 behind Bolt, was disqualified after a U.S. protest for running out of his lane. “It feels like a charity case,” Crawford said.

Either way, it was about four body lengths, the biggest margin in an Olympic 200.

American Walter Dix was awarded the bronze medal when the third man across the line, teammate Wallace Spearmon, also was DQ’d for leaving his lane. (Official results)

Footnotes to history.

Bolt added the 19.30 — 0.02 better than Johnson’s old mark — to the 9.69 he ran the 100 four nights before when he hot-dogged the final 20 meters to set the world record.

Everyone thought he could’ve done better in the 100 had he run hard the whole way, but the 200 has always been Bolt’s favorite, the one he spent his life on, and this time he saved the showboating for after the race.

“I’ve been dreaming of this since I was yea high,” Bolt said. “So it means a lot more to me actually than the 100 means.”

After the unrelenting effort with a slight headwind in his face, Bolt sprawled out on the ground, arms and legs outstretched, basking in the roar of the Bird’s Nest crowd and the glow of becoming, quite possibly, the greatest sprinter ever.

Bolt’s name now goes above, or at least beside, every great sprinter to ever put on spikes.

He became the first man to win the 100-200 double at the Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984.

He gets mentioned in the same breath with Johnson, as well as Jesse Owens and any of the other six men to complete the Olympic 100-200 double. Nobody other than Johnson had ever run a 200 in under 19.6 and nobody had broken 9.7 in the 100 before Beijing.

Bolt has done both, the only man ever to break the world record in both sprints in the same Olympics.

Bolt is simply a different kind of runner — coiled power in his 6-foot-5 frame, supposedly too big for success in the 100, but certainly built to run the 200.

“It’s his anatomy,” said Renaldo Nehemiah, the former world record-holder in the 110-meter hurdles. “He’s just blessed with an uncanny frame, an uncanny quickness, a huge competitive heart. And he is having a good time, which I think our sport sorely needs to see.”

Indeed, track and field could use a breath of fresh air after years of bad news, bad characters and failed drug tests that have come close to turning the sport into second-tier Olympic viewing.

There are cynics who believe Bolt might be too good to be true himself. But the Jamaican insists he is clean, that he plays by the rules, that any improvement he’s enjoyed over the last few months has come courtesy of rededicating himself to his training and staying off the dance floor he loves so much.

Before the race, track officials said he had been subjected to 11 doping tests since the beginning of 2008, including four since July 27. None so far has come back positive.

The man whose record fell was talking about Bolt’s dominance, not his drug tests, when it was over.

“Incredible,” Johnson said. “He got an incredible start. Guys of 6-5 should not be able to start like that. It’s that long, massive stride. He’s eating up so much more track than others. He came in focused, knowing he would likely win the gold and he’s got the record.”

Bolt’s move out of the starting block isn’t nearly as important in the 200 as the 100, which makes the longer race more about raw speed. But a good start certainly doesn’t hurt. He got one this time, even if it was fifth out of the eight runners. He burst out of the blocks from Lane 5 and overcame the lag about a quarter of the way through.

He averaged 9.65 per 100 meters — faster than his 4-day-old record in the 100.

Bolt won the race on the eve of his 22nd birthday and a version of “Happy Birthday” played over the public-address system as he took off his gold shoes and wrapped the Jamaican flag around his shoulders like a scarf.

He did another hip-swiveling dance, then raised his hands and pointed toward the scoreboard. A little later, he posed near the trackside clock — the traditional picture that all world record-setters take. Bolt now has three of them — this, the 100 from Saturday and the picture he took in New York in May when he broke the 100 record the first time.

“You’re back there giving it everything you’ve got — it’s brutal,” said Kim Collins, the 2003 world champ who finished sixth. “He’s doing it and making it look so simple. Michael Johnson did it, and it didn’t look that easy.”

It sparked a tremendous celebration in Jamaica, which improved to 3-for-3 in Olympic sprints, including Shelly-Ann Fraser’s win in the women’s 100 on Sunday.

There was more for the island country to be happy about Wednesday night.

Shortly after Bolt finished, Jamaican Melaine Walker won the women’s 400-meter hurdles in an Olympic-record 52.64, finishing ahead of American Sheena Tosta.

More than an hour later, in a nearly empty Bird’s Nest, the struggling American team — the team with only three gold medals so far — took another blow when Brad Walker, the reigning pole vault world champion, didn’t reach the final.

All of that was mere filler on this night, though.

And while Michael Phelps may be The Story of these Olympics with his swimming gold medals, Bolt became the breakout superstar in his own right with double world records.

“I can’t, I won’t compare myself with Michael Phelps,” Bolt said. “I’m on the track; he’s in the water. We can’t compare too much. He’s the best in what he do.”

So is Bolt, and his sheer dominance in the most basic tests of speed will not soon be surpassed.

Unless, of course, he does it himself.

“As he gets older, physically more mature, he can only get faster,” Nehemiah said.

Who would be surprised?

I heard the commentator say: if there was a record for making a race look easy Bolt would also have that record…!!! that is true wouldn’t you say so yourself?

The lanky 21-year-old, who is reported by the Financial Times to have boosted Puma’s sale of sneakers by two million pairs in the first hour after taking the 100m title on Saturday, was diplomatic when asked if he would go after Johnson’s 12-year-old record. “I’ll leave it all on the track,” he said.

For the record, Namibian legend Frankie Fredericks, who placed second to Johnson in that world record race in Atlanta, has joined the list of top class sprinters to tip Bolt to surpass the 19.32secs clocking.

“19.2, he’ll run 19.2,” Fredericks told the Observer following Sunday’s 100m medals ceremony.

American Johnson, who is commentating at these Olympic Games for the BBC and Jamaican-born Canadian sprinter Donovan Bailey, whose Olympic record of 9.84secs, which Bolt erased, both tipped Bolt to take the 200m record to a new dimension prior to the start of these Games.

Yesterday, Bolt cruised into the semi-finals of the half-lap event, barely working up a sweat to the surprise of the 91,000 spectators and thousands of accredited international media covering these Games. Bolt first returned 20.64secs for second in the fifth of eight preliminary heats, before literally strolling to 20.29 in the quarter-finals, making defending champion Shawn Crawford, who was drawn in the lane ahead of him, look ordinary.

“I just went out there to qualify and that was my first aim and I did just that,” the Glen Mills-coached sprinter said after his sixth race at these Games. Asked if he would be going for Johnson’s record of 19.32, Bolt replied: “I’m just going out there to lay it all on the track because this is my last (Individual) race and hope for the best,” he said, noting that he was a little tired after six races.
“But, I’m OK, I just need some rest ahead of the semi-final and final.”

Bolt, who will celebrate his 22nd birthday on August 21, has been drawn to run in lane six of semi-final two (today) along with the American pair of Wallace Spearmon and Crawford, Kim Collins of St Kitts and Nevis, Jaysuma Saidy Ndure of Norway and Antigua’s Brendan Christian.

Jamaica’s Chris Williams, the 2001 World Championship silver medallist, will run in lane nine of the semi-final along with 100m silver medallist Walter Dix and Churandy Martina of the Netherlands Antilles. The third Jamaican, Marvin Anderson, who contested last year’s final in Osaka, pulled up injured after about 120 metres in his quarter-final with a left hamstring injury. The final is scheduled for tomorrow.

Bolt crowned himself the best sprinter of all time on Saturday by winning Jamaica’s first ever Olympic gold in the blue riband event by shaving 0.03 seconds off his previous world record of 9.72 established in New York on May 31.

Only Ricardo Chambers managed to advance from the preliminary round into today’s semi-final. Chambers, Jamaica’s most consistent quarter-miler all season, posted a conservative 45.22 seconds for third in heat four and progressed automatically to the round of 16.

It was a different story for Sanjay Ayre, who clocked 45.66 seconds and national champion Michael Blackwood (45.56), who finished fifth and fourth respectively in heats two and four.

“My body was still sleeping, I just didn’t react fast enough and could rally back in the 100m because fatigue settled into my legs,” said Blackwood, a semi-finalist at last year’s world championships in Osaka, Japan.

If Jamaicans are disappointed by Blackwood’s and Ayre’s failure to pass the first round in the 400m, then the collective 1.3 billion Chinese people are heartbroken following an Achilles Tendon injury to their main medal hope and poster boy Liu Ziang. Ziang, the defending 110m hurdles champion from Athens 2004, grimaced in pain as he pushed out of the starting blocks before walking off the track. His actions sent most of the 91,000 Chinese spectators on hand at the Bird’s Nest Stadium into tears. Ziang’s personal coach, Sun Hai Peng and China’s national coach Feng Shu Yang, later disclosed that the sprint hurdler aggravated a long-standing Achilles Tendon injury during training on Saturday.

“Given the seriousness of the injury at the base of his heel, Ziang will skip the rest of the European circuit,” coach Peng said. He noted that the hamstring injury, which sidelined him earlier this year, was fully healed.

Ziang was joined on the sideline by American Terrence Trammell, the two-time Olympic silver medallist from Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004. Pre-meet favourite, Cuban Dayron Robles, who shattered Ziang’s world record earlier this season, is overwhelmingly favoured to win the 110 metres obstacle race.

Jamaican champion Richard Phillips and Maurice Wignall, the fourth-placed finisher from Athens, both progressed to the semi-finals after conservative runs. Phillips returned 13.60 seconds for fourth in heat one behind Robles 13.39, while Wignall clocked a season best 13.61 for fourth in heat four.