Bolt’s 100m gold highlights dramatic evening – Day 2 wrap, Moscow 2013
11.08.2013
Nature delivered a perfect backdrop for the 100m final, if not perfect footing, and Usain Bolt reclaimed the World title at 100m with a flash of lightning over his shoulder. The 100m final capped a long second day of competition on Sunday at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
Lightning for Bolt
A bolt of lightning at the finish would be heavy-handed symbolism in a film, but when the 100m final came up it was the way Moscow’s weekend heat wave broke. The lightning started almost half an hour before the 100m was called to the blocks. An earlier wave of rain had stopped as the sprinters lined up, then resumed before Bolt’s introduction, and the showman mimed an umbrella as he was introduced to the crowd.
The Jamaican got out of the blocks well and ploughed through the rain in lane six with USA’s Justin Gatlin on his left shoulder. It was clear from halfway that he was already in the lead, and the flash of lightning to the north just after he crossed the line in 9.77 was nothing more than a coincidence, albeit a theatrical one.
It was not a World record, as his previous championship 100m victory in Berlin was, but it was a race, a story, and a victory, and there are still none quicker than Bolt. Gatlin took silver in 9.85, and Bolt’s countryman Nesta Carter the bronze with 9.95.
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