2009 athletics 100m 2026

Usain Bolt ran 9.58 seconds in the men's 100 metres at the World Championships, a world record that still makes this race feel unreal. The sprint took place over two days at Berlin's Olympic Stadium, with heats, quarter-finals, semi-finals, and the final determining the fastest man. Ninety sprinters entered, and the main contest was Bolt against Tyson Gay, the defending world champion. Gay had a 9.77 season best, while Bolt's was 9.79, and four other runners had already gone under 10 seconds. The race was the standard 100 metres: a single straight run down the track, where the start, drive phase, and top speed leave little room to recover from an error. Several notable competitors were eliminated before the final, including Derrick Atkins in the first round and Churandy Martina, Kim Collins, Samuel Francis, and Olusoji Fasuba in the quarter-finals. Christophe Lemaitre was disqualified after a double false start, and Bolt also false started in the semi-final before running 9.89. Berlin billed the final as "Das Duell" between Bolt and Gay, but Bolt was already slightly ahead by 20 metres and continued to extend his lead. Gay still ran 9.71, then the third-fastest time recorded, while Asafa Powell completed a Jamaican sweep of the podium.