Bolt still the fastest man on earth
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Usain Bolt sauntered onto the track, stretched out his arms and waved his hands, signaling for more applause.
He knew how this night was going to go.
Bolt's swan song in the Olympic 100 meters Sunday night was a no-doubter — a pedestrian-by-his-standards 9.81second sprint down the straightaway, but not so slow that he couldn't take time to point at his own chest with his thumb a step before he crossed the finish line.
“It was brilliant,” Bolt said. “I didn't go so fast but I'm so happy I won. I told you guys I was going to do it.”
He won his record-setting third straight title in track's featured event and his seventh Olympic gold.
He has already swept aside pretty much every sprinter who had any claim on being the greatest.
So, on a muggy night in Rio, Bolt took aim at Michael Phelps, shoving the swimmer and all his 23 medals to the background and made it official: The Bolt Games have begun.
“I told you guys I wanted to set myself apart from everybody else," Bolt said. "This is the Olympics that I have to do it at.”
Bolt beat American Justin Gatlin, who was greeted by the fans with raucous boos, by .08 seconds. Andre de Grasse of Canada won the bronze.
Bolt has a chance for two more golds — in his favorite race, the 200 final Thursday, then in the 4x100 relay Saturday night.
He wasn't the only one to put on a show Sunday.
A few minutes before his race, world champion Wayde van Niekerk of South Africa eclipsed what many thought was the most-unbreakable record in the book — Michael Johnson's 17-year-old mark of 43.18 seconds in 400 meters.
Running out of Lane 8, where the lag puts him well in front of the rest of the field, van Niekerk never saw a soul — crossing in 43.03 and only glancing to his left when he approached the line to peer at the clock, which showed him what he had done.
“Usain Bolt will be retiring soon, but this could be the next star of the sport,” Johnson said during his commentary on BBC.
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Andy Murray is making a habit of accomplishing things that hadn't been done in a while. Or ever. Murray became the first tennis player in Olympic history with two singles gold medals, winning his second in a row by wearing down Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina 7-5, 4-6, 6-2, 7-5 at the Rio de Janeiro Games in a back-and-forth 4-hour final Sunday.
“Anything could have happened,” said Murray, who took the last four games after trailing 5-3 in the fourth set.
“Emotionally, it was tough. Physically, it was hard,” he said. “So many ups and downs.:
At the 2012 London Olympics, Murray won a singles gold and mixed doubles silver at the All England Club. That, of course, was also the site of his historic 2013 Wimbledon championship, ending the hosts' 77-year wait for a British man to claim the trophy.
Murray won Wimbledon again last month, raising his Grand Slam title count to three.
On Sunday, the No. 2-seeded Murray stopped the resurgent run of the 141st-ranked del Potro, who knocked off No. 1 Novak Djokovic in the first round after getting stuck in an athletes village elevator for 40 minutes earlier in the day, then beat No. 3 Rafael Nadal in the semifinals. No man ever has defeated the top three seeds on the way to a gold, but 2009 US champion del Potro sure came close before winding up with a silver to go alongside his bronze from 2012.
Del Potro had the louder support, and one fan even yelled something as Murray was about to hit a shot while two points from victory. He put the ball in the net and glared in the direction the voice came from. Soon after, a spectator was escorted out.
Nadal, the 2008 gold medalist, lost 6-2, 6-7 (1), 6-3 earlier Sunday to Kei Nishikori, whose bronze is Japan's first Olympic tennis medal since 1920.