Triple World Record (WR) holder Usain Bolt was gifted with an early birthday present after competing in the final event of his illustrious Olympic career, the men’s 4x100m relay where he anchored the Jamaican team to a third consecutive Olympic title on Friday, August 19 in Rio.
The sprint legend turns 30 on the final day of the Olympics, August 21, and would definitely have a lot to celebrate as he takes his tally of Olympic GOLD medals to nine, securing the ‘Triple Triple’ to bow out on a high as far as the Olympics is concerned.
A different scenario played out in the women’s event as USA stunned Jamaica to win GOLD in the world’s second fastest time ever, successfully defending their title from London 2012 where the quartet of Allyson Felix, Tianna Bartoletta, Bianca Knight and Carmelita Jeter ran a WR of 40.82s.
Meanwhile an upset occurred in the women’s 5000m final where Vivian Cheruiyot became the first ever Kenyan to win the event, shocking Almaz Ayana who was the tournament favourite and could only settle for Bronze.
A new order was established in the women’s Pole vault as Greek Champion Ekaterini Stefanidi upstaged London 2012 GOLD and Silver medallists, Jenn Suhr and Yarisley Silva to win the title.
Dilshod Nazarov put his country Tajikistan on the world map after winning the men’s Hammer title with a distance of 78.68m, finishing ahead of Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus (77.79m) and Poland’s Wojciech Nowicki (77.73m).
The preliminaries of the men and women’s 4x400m held on Day 8 and Botswana qualified for their first ever 4x400m final at the Olympics after racing to a National Record (NR) of 2:59.35 to finish 3rd in their heat. Other qualifiers in the men’s event are Jamaica, USA, Poland, Belgium, Bahamas, Cuba and Brazil.
In the women’s event, qualifiers for Saturday’s final include USA, Jamaica, Ukraine, Great Britain, Canada, Italy, Poland and Australia.
