Usain Bolt: 9.58

At the track and field world championships in Germany this evening, Usain Bolt set another world record in the 100-meters: 9.58 seconds, besting his previous record of 9.69. Can he go under 9.5?

Update: Here's the race in HD. It's a lot closer than the Olympic final...Gay was really hauling as well. The Times reports that the 0.11 seconds Bolt shaved off the record was the largest difference since the advent of electronic timing in 1977.

Update: More on the 100 meter record. If you look at a graph of the 100 meter records (and here), Bolt's time looks even more impressive...he broke the record more than it's ever been broken.

But second off, you can also see that Usain Bolt is running much faster than humans ought to be running right now. This should give you an inkling of just how special these performances we're seeing from him are. We shouldn't be seeing times like this until the 2030s. Which means, honestly, that it ought to take around 30 years for someone else to come along and break his record.

Even Michael Johnson was impressed.

And then, of course, Bolt went out and broke his own record in the 200 meters, a record which seemed untouchable at the Olympics last year and he beat it by 0.11 seconds. Here's the video in HD.

(thx, newley, @holgate, and david)

Usain Bolt still fast

Yesterday he ran 200m in 19.59s on a wet track with a headwind, winning by an absurd margin. (via biancolo)

Usain Bolt speeds to record in 150 meters

Yesterday, Usain Bolt broke the unofficial record at the rarely contested distance of 150 meters, running it in 14.35 seconds on a temporary surface set up in Manchester's city center. This sounds made up, but here's the video.

(via biancolo)

Usain Bolt: 9.55 seconds

Some physicists have worked out what Usain Bolt's time in the 100 meters in Beijing would have been if he hadn't started celebrating before the finish line: 9.55 seconds. The original paper is here. I tried doing this the day after the race but even the HD footage wasn't good enough to see the tick marks on the track and I didn't want to mess around with all the angles. (via justin blanton)

Update: The folks at The Science of Sport lay out a much more sensible case relying on split times that Bolt would have run somewhere between 9.61 and 9.69. (thx, jim)

You vs. Usain Bolt

Race Usain Bolt in this button mashing Flash game. I was a fair Track & Fielder back in the day so I beat Bolt on my first attempt. [Insert elaborate archery pose emoticon here.] (thx, scott)

Michael Johnson's 19.32

A look at just how crazy Michael Johnson's 200m world record is.

Eyeballing the chart would suggest that the cutting edge of human achievement in the 200m is anything sub-19.7. A 19.59 at Beijing would be phenomenal. Then you scroll down -- way down -- and you hit Johnson's 19.32.

Johnson has stated that he's fully prepared for Usain Bolt to break his record.