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UNEXPECTED: Saturday's run was only Usain Bolt's fifth 100m dash as a professional athlete. -- PHOTO: REUTERS
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NEW YORK - LIKE lightning out of nowhere, Usain Bolt is now the world's fastest man.
The Jamaican sprinter, a 200 metres specialist, set the 100m world record with a time of 9.72 seconds at the Reebok Grand Prix in New York on Saturday.
It was 0.02sec faster than the old record held by his countryman, Asafa Powell.
Bolt was competing in the 100m for only the fifth time in a professional race. Now, the 21-year-old has his eyes on a bigger prize - Olympic gold in athletics' blue-riband event.
'I'm definitely going to run the 100m in the Olympics,' said Bolt, who only last week was unsure about running the event in Beijing.
Now, he is desperate for gold to validate Saturday's record run.
'Tomorrow, if someone comes and runs faster than me, I'm no longer the fastest man in the world,' he said.
'If you're the Olympic champion, then they have to wait four more years to get you again.'
His brilliant performance crowned a great night for Jamaica as world champion Veronica Campbell-Brown ran the fastest women's 100m of the year. She won in 10.91sec, two-hundredths of a second faster than American Allyson Felix's 2008 best.
The night belonged to Bolt, but no one expected it.
His height - listed as 1.96m - and running style seem to make him much more fit for powering through turns in the 200m and persevering in the 400m.
He won a silver medal at the World Championships in Osaka last year, when he finished behind American Tyson Gay in the 200m.
Then, as a speed workout, he entered a 100m race in Jamaica early last month. The result: 9.76sec, the second-fastest 100m ever.
He got a poor start in the first attempt at Saturday's race, but got a reprieve after another sprinter false-started.
The second gun did not go off until the nervous runners were 20m down the track. So it simply did not seem like a night for world records.
'I was glad for the first false start,' Bolt said. 'My start wasn't that good. I knew that if I got Tyson on the start, I'd get him.'
On the third attempt, he got a searing start and Gay, despite running only one-hundredth of a second off his personal best, never threatened.
Bolt was assisted by a healthy tailwind of 1.7m/s, just under the limit at which a record can be set.
He threw his arms up and circled the track, beating on his chest at one point at the sheer dominance and improbability of the moment.
A few moments later, he hoisted the Jamaican flag and a crowd with hundreds of Jamaican fans went wild.
Then, he kneeled and posed next to the scoreboard that recorded the fastest time ever - 9.72.
'I honestly think we were on the same rhythm, except his stride pattern is a lot bigger,' Gay said. 'He was covering a lot more ground than I was.'
'An awesome athlete,' said American Shawn Crawford, who finished sixth and witnessed history from two lanes inside of Bolt. 'The time shows it.'
At the end of this month, Bolt and Powell should square off in the 100m at the Jamaican championships - another race that may just produce another world-best time.
Powell, who set the mark of 9.74 last September in Italy, is overcoming a chest injury but is expected to be healthy soon.
Bolt's reputation has been growing in Jamaica.
In the run-up to the 2004 Athens Olympics, he broke the world junior record.
Two years before that in Kingston, he sent the stadium into a frenzy by winning the world junior title over 200m aged just 15.
But, in Athens, the whole aura of the Olympics got to him and he was eliminated in the first round.
There is a long build-up between now and Beijing and already Bolt, because of what he has achieved, will have the tag of favourite around his neck.
As the Games get closer, that tag will get heavier and it will be interesting to see how he deals with that pressure now that he is the fastest man in the world.
Other top performances on Saturday included world championship bronze medallist Wallace Spearmon winning the men's 200m in 20.07sec.
Paul Koech of Kenya recorded the fastest 3,000m steeplechase on American soil with a time of 8min 1.85sec.
However, there was disappointment for China's world record holder and Olympic champion Liu Xiang, who had to withdraw from the 110m hurdles owing to a tight hamstring.
'I'll be doubling now, definitely.'
USAIN BOLT, who had been committed to running the 200m in Beijing, but was unsure about the 100m. That all changed after he broke the world record
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