De Grasse conjured up his personal best to take the Bronze ahead of another American Mike Rodgers, who timed 9.94 seconds. But the race wasn’t even the fastest of the night, after a dramatic semifinal two hours earlier in which Bolt almost failed to qualify for the championship.
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Bolt left the stadium sporting the broadest smile. His yellow-colored Jamaica jersey crossed marginally ahead the red-clad Gatlin for his third world title in the 100.
He ended up beating Gatlin by just one hundredth of a second, and given that the American has routinely run faster than that, including in the semi-finals, some may think he wilted under the pressure of being favoured over Bolt for once. “It wasn’t ideal but I got it done”.
The Waterford athlete said: “Unfortunately I’m out at the semi-finals of my first World Championships”. “Me, I was the chaser, so it was different”. All I had to do was put together a good race. “It’s a simple thing”.
Bolt won the 2009 Worlds in Berlin with double world records of 9.58, 19.19 in the 100 and 200.
In the track equivalent of a marquee heavyweight bout, Usain Bolt got the better of Justin Gatlin, narrowly edging him in the 100-meter final at the World Athletic Championships in Beijing.
Masrahi ran the one-lap race in 43.93 seconds to improve the continental record he already held since past year by a whopping half a second.
However, Gatlin is controversial as a result of the fact that he served a ban for testing positive for a banned substance in 2006, and has come back to challenge Bolt despite being an age where most sprinters are traditionally past their peak. But Gatlin was seen as the clear favorite.
“At the end of the day, I guess I would say I gave the race away the last five meters”, Gatlin said.
But he also paid tribute to Bolt, saying: “He’s a gamer”. Bolt’s edge over Gatlin was ten times faster than that. “I look up to them”, he said.
“I’m not sure what happened, I just stumbled”.
“And he is right because I knew exactly what to do”.
For the first time in world-championships history, advancing to the final of the 100 required a sub-10-second performance.
In the buildup to this race the IAAF, which will be led by Sebastian Coe once these championships are over, has been on the back foot, fighting a desperate rearguard action to try to convince a sceptical world it is doing enough to stand up to the threat of doping.
Su managed to enter the final after a dramatic semifinal where three athletes all clocked 9.99 and all of them qualified to make it a rare nine-man final.
Powell, who finished seventh with a time of 10.00 seconds, was disappointed.
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Bolt had a better start than the American, but Gatlin caught up only to stumble near the 70-meter mark leaving Bolt the chance to take advantage and produce a stunning display.
