Usain Bolt set new world record

Usain Bolt will be in quest of to complete the 12th IAAF World Championships run double when he runs in the 200 metres final at the Berlin Olympic Stadium today

Usain Bolt in the starting blocks before his 150 metres world top run of 14.35 seconds.

Bolt started the season competing over 400 metres in order to improve his speed, winning two races and registering 45.54 s in Kingston, and windy conditions gave him his first sub-10 second finish in the 100 m in March. In late April Bolt suffered minor leg injuries in a car crash. However, he quickly recovered following minor surgery and (after cancelling a track meet in Jamaica) he stated that he was fit to compete in the 150 metres street race at the Manchester Great City Games. Bolt won the race in 14.35 s, the fastest time ever recorded for 150 m. Despite not being at full fitness, he took the 100 and 200 m titles at the Jamaican national championships, with runs of 9.86 s (a world-leading time) and 20.25 s respectively. This meant he had qualified for both events at the 2009 World Championships. Rival Tyson Gay suggested that Bolt's 100 m record was within his grasp, but Bolt dismissed the claim and instead noted that he was more interested in Asafa Powell's return from injury. Bolt defied unfavourable conditions at the Athletissima meet in July, running 19.59 seconds into a 0.9 m/s headwind and rain, to record the fourth fastest time ever over 200 m, one hundredth off Gay's world-leading time.

At the 2009 World Championships in August, Bolt eased through the 100 m heats, clocking the fastest ever pre-final performance of 9.89 seconds. The final was the first time Bolt and Gay had met in the season, and the American ran 9.71 s, 0.02 s off Bolt's 9.69 s world record run in Beijing. However, Bolt finished some distance ahead of Gay, improving the world record to 9.58 s to win his first World Championship gold medal. Taking over a tenth of a second off the previous best mark, this was the largest ever margin of improvement in the 100 m world record since the beginning of electronic timing.

Usain Bolt set new world record for 200m in 19.59 seconds

Usain Bolt ran the 200m at the Athletissima meet in Lausaunne with a time of 19.59 seconds - one tenth of a second off the world leading time set by Tyson Gay at the Reebok Grand Prix on 31st May, 2009.

In the torrential rainfall the Jamaican runner clocked just one hundredth of a second outer of the fastest time of the year set by American Tyson Gay, in his first and only European 200 meters appearance before next month's World Championships in Berlin.

Bolt is a Jamaican sprinter. Bolt holds the Olympic and world records for the 100 meters at 9.69 seconds, the 200 meters at 19.30 seconds and, along with his teammates, the 4x100 meters relay at 37.10 seconds, all set at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Bolt became the first man to win all three events at a single Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984, and the first man in history to set world records in all three at a single Olympics.

In characteristic way Bolt left the field sprawling in his wake up as he ran a time that suggested in better circumstances, he possibly will be on form to intimidate his own world record of 19.30 set by the Beijing Olympics.