Saturday, August 11, 2012

All Sporting Saturday's Should Be This Good


Made it Ma - Top of the world

Usain Bolt won his third gold medal of the 2012 Olympics as he anchored Jamaica's sprint relay team to a world record. The new Fab Four ran 36.84 seconds to beat their own World Record by two-tenths of a second and leave the USA team with silver.  Nesta Carter and Michael Frater are the soon to be forgotten athletes who produced stunning first and second legs to set-up Yohan Blake for his leg that in turn set the stage for the living legend that is Usain Bolt. Bolt seemed to be driven forward by 80,000 people in the Olympic Stadium who were shouting themselves hoarse as one of the most memorable athletics meetings of recent times came to a close.

Earlier in the evening the Mobot had been on display again as Mo Farah capped possibly the finest individual performance by any British track athlete at a major games by doing the 'double' at 5,000 and 10,000 metres. His last lap in the 5,000 metres tonight was as dominant and controlled as his last lap in the 10,000 metres had been last Satuday.

It's been a fantastic nine days of action across all the centres and all the sports and we can feel proud as a nation that we have embraced the games with such enthusiastic passion. The doubles of Bolt and Farah in their individual events will be long remembered but for me it was the 800 metres final on Thursday night, a race that was really part of the 'undercard' to the second part of the Bolt inidvidual double that was the highlight of the events in the stadium.
David Rudisha

David Rudisha led the race from starting gun to finishing tape and it was an extraordinary race in every possible sense of the word. It wasn't just the new World Record time but the manner in which the race was run. Seven of the eight runners set either new national records or personal bests for the distance, in the case of Andrew Osagie, who finished seventh, his time would have won gold at each of the last three Olympics. Rudisha simply dragged everybody in the race along with him in what is probably the greatest 800 metre race of all time. Watching him lead the field down the back straight was like watching a mother duck leading her brood down to the water for their first swim, truly a remarkable race.

From that first Saturday morning a fortnight ago when Jessica Ennis stepped onto the track and ran the 100 metres hurdles through to the end of the relay tonight it has been a great games to watch.  

No comments: