What a knight: Bolt blitzes his 200m record and says – I'd love to be Sir Usain

Can you believe it! Four days after Usain Bolt shattered the world 100 metres record, he destroyed his own 200m record last night in the same Olympic Stadium by the same margin of 0.11 seconds.

• One year to the day since he first claimed the record from Michael Johnson in Beijing’s Bird Nest Stadium – and hours before he celebrates his 23rd birthday – Bolt reduced the record to 19.19sec.
• And he was running into a slight headwind! We have come to expect the incredible from this giant Jamaican, but the shock was still palpable among the sell-out crowd of 56,000.
• Bolt said: ‘The world record – I did not really have it on my mind. I definitely showed people that my world records in Beijing were not a joke. I am ready now for another record for our relay.
• ‘I do all this for my country. They are crazy for me and proud of me. I am honoured. If Queen Elizabeth knighthooded me and I would get the title Sir Usain Bolt, it would sound very nice.’
• From the sound of the gun, there was one man going for gold. The others were in a race of their own in another world. The clock was his only opponent.
• He had made up the staggered start on Alonso Edward, the Panamanian outside him, before they had run 20 metres. He had overhauled the two others beyond him before the bend was run.
• He won by six metres from Edward, a distance on the clock of 0.62sec. It is the widest winning margin in the event in the 26 years of these championships.
• No sprinter has ever before held Olympic and world titles at 100 and 200m while also holding both world records. Now he is talking of testing himself at 400m next year.
• Bolt will take his birthday off today while four of his Jamaican team-mates do the work of qualifying Jamaica for the final of the 4 x 100m relay. He will then return to action for tomorrow’s final, a third gold inevitable.
• Bolt is resurrecting interest in the sport so badly damaged by the doping crimes of previous generations. More than 10 million Germans watched his 100m world record on television, more than watched the last World Cup final.
• The man at the centre of the maelstrom remains as cool as an iced rum and Coke, able to perform for the cameras up to the moment he is invited to go to his blocks.
• Last night, to the delight of his German hosts, he walked into the stadium wearing a Jamaican T-shirt inscribed with the words ‘Ich Bin Ein Berlino’, recalling President Kennedy’s remark in his famous address to the city during the Cold War. The locals excused him his single spelling mistake.
• A shock hardly registering on the Richter scale of performances beside Bolt’s was the performance of Britain’s Will Sharman in the 110m hurdles. Sharman won his semi-final after Dayron Robles, Cuba’s Olympic champion and world record-holder, pulled up injured in the lane next to him.
• That gave the Nottingham man a career best time of 13.38sec, and in the final he improved again to 13.30sec to finish fourth in a race won by Barbadian Ryan Brathwaite in 13.14.
• It was a good day for Britain with six more qualifiers for finals. Pole vaulter Steve Lewis made it with a vault of 5.65 and Mo Farah qualified in the 5,000m.
• Long jumpers Greg Rutherford and Chris Tomlinson will each appear in tomorrow evening’s final, while Huddersfield’s Emily Freeman will contest her first global final in the 200m at the age of 28.