| Looking back at Beijing |
Vaibhav Arora
While one the one hand, the 2008 Olympics games in Beijing shifted the sports superpower title from the United States of America to China, on the other hand the games also established Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Yelena Isinbayeva as the undisputed leaders of their respective sports.
Bolt, the lanky Jamaican who achieved the most remarkable gold medal double in the history of modern Olympics by clinching both the 100 and 200 meter races thrilled the capacity crowd at the Bird’s Nest stadium with his electrifying speeds.
Having clocked an incredible 9.72 in the 100 meters trial, Bolt went one step ahead in the final to further reduce the mark to 9.69, thus becoming the first man to clock under 9.7 and that too while strolling comfortably towards the end and thumping his chest proudly.
The 200 meters event was no different as the Jamaican ran a perfect race to clock 19.30 and demolish Michael Johnson’s world record set in 1996.
While Bolt earned the sobriquet of lightning on the ground, it was Michael Phelps who swam his way to glory by earning eight golds and thus setting the world record for most number of gold medals won in a single edition of the Olympics. Phelps also managed to break seven world records in process.
Phelps was so determined to achieve the feat of eight gold medals that he managed to win the fourth final even as his goggles leaked and temporarily blinded him just before the finish. The swimmer equalled Mark Spitz’s record of seven golds in a single edition of the Olympics by beating second placed Milorad Cavic of Serbia by a tantalizingly close margin of one-hundredth of a second.
Yelena Isinbayeva too made a mark on the Beijing Games after she broke the world women’s pole vault record as she soared over the bar placed at an incredible 5.05 meters. The Russian also set her 24th world record in process.
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