Graphic: Lightning strikes twice

Being a superhero can be hard work and so, with his face contorted into a grimace and blowing hard, Usain Bolt showed that he is more than a showman who can transform the world's best sprinters into a bunch of salad-dodging parents at a school sports day. “I am not Flash Gordon or Superman,” he said. “My name is Lightning Bolt.”

It has taken a week to turn the Jamaica sprinter from a monosyllabic man unsure of his Olympic schedule into an all-singing, all-dancing sporting freak show. Having reduced his 100 metres world record to 9.69sec on Saturday, Bolt broke Michael Johnson's fabled 200 metres mark with a run of 19.30sec yesterday. “I just blew my mind,” he said. “And I blew the world's mind.”

It was a phrase that echoed another Olympic hero. Cassius Clay took gold in 1960 and four years later stood over a prostrate Sonny Liston, shouting: “I shook up the world! I shook up the world!” So has Bolt.

Back to reality for golden generation

Olympic heroes will discover if the last 17 days has been a life-changing experience or a glorious but brief interlude

• Team GB to be rewarded with gold for gold

• Hard work starts now as British sailors look towards London 2012

• Public support gained from success in Beijing needs to last four years

BACKGROUND

• How the Brits became world beaters

• London double-decker arrives in Beijing

• Olympics proves capacity for greatness

• New dawn for British sport as Olympic sun sets

Multimedia

• Simon Barnes in Beijing

• Bring back the tug-of-war

• Top 100 Olympic athletes of all time

Related Links

• IOC president criticises Bolt for lack of respect

• Bolt runs away with his second gold

• Rogge fails to see champion in Bolt

The sheer physical madness of his feats has managed to revive a field that began these Olympics tainted by a series of drug scandals. Three out of the past five Olympic 100 metres champions had fallen foul of the testers. Sprinting was dying a death by a thousand self-inflicted short cuts and people wondered if it could ever become the box-office turn of old. And then came Bolt. Not Flash Gordon and not Superman, but Lightning Bolt. Suddenly, from being a spittoon for sporting cynicism, sprinting was back. It took a 6ft 5in giant to suspend the disbelief.

The Chinese have learnt the folly of putting all their eggs in one basket, even in one bird's nest, after Liu Xiang's departure, but they have found an Everyhero. The 100 metres was special, but most onlookers felt that Bolt could break that record in the near future. The 200 metres was different. Johnson's mark of 19.32sec, set in the Olympic final in Atlanta in 1996, had never been truly threatened.

Johnson had spent the afternoon explaining why it would not be broken. “He has incredible leg speed and a long stride,” he said. “That combination is deadly, but the 200 metres has another element, which is speed endurance. What we don't know is how long he can hold that speed.” Having been proved decisively wrong, Johnson was generous. “Incredible time, incredible performance,” he said.

Bolt, 22 today, had the endurance because his coach, Glen Mills, makes him run the 400 metres in training. Would he move up to that event, too? “Anything is possible if I put my mind to it,” Bolt said. Mills said Bolt is too lazy, but his apathy has not prevented him from becoming the first man to hold both sprint records since Don Quarrie, his Jamaican hero.

The 100 metres record came with ten metres of showboating. The semi-final of the 200 metres had inflicted cruelty as he jogged alongside Shawn Crawford, the defending champion from the United States. Afterwards, Crawford breezed through the media pack with the crushed air of a man who had just seen the future and did not care for it.

In the final, Bolt ate up the ground and came off the bend with daylight between him and the rest. The race won, he gave this one his all, fighting hard against history and the man up in the BBC gantry. The time was initially given as 19.31 but was later confirmed as 19.30.

“I spoke to the Prime Minister [Bruce Golding] and he said the country is pretty much blocked off,” Bolt said. He danced, made his lightning gesture and looked for his parents. In his wake, chaos.

Churandy Martina thought he had become the first man from Netherlands Antilles to win an Olympic track medal and Wallace Spearmon, of the US, celebrated an assumed bronze. It took Spearmon an entire celebration lap to realise he had been disqualified for running out of lane. Then the US put in a protest, accusing Martina of the same offence. It was upheld. Crawford suddenly found himself elevated to second place with his team-mate, Walter Dix, third. Nobody cared.

Bolt is the driver of the Jamaican freight train that has breezed through Beijing, with its women completing a clean sweep in the 100 metres. Much praise has been lavished on Mills and Stephen Francis, the country's two most eminent coaches; what is clear is that Bolt is a stand-alone phenomenon.

His pre-race schedule? “You want the truth?” he said. “I got up at 12, my masseuse brought me [chicken] nuggets. I went to the track and had more nuggets. I only had two because my coach said I should not eat too many before a race.” His father, Wellesley, suggests a local vegetable, the Trelawny yam, is his secret. It is food for thought.

Bolt will try to add another gold in the 4x100 metres relay before departing China. He said he knew the 200 metres record was within his grasp but felt the seven races he had already run here would prevent it from happening yesterday. He was generous in his glory. “Michael Johnson revolutionised the sport,” he said. “I just changed it a little bit.” Changed the sport, shook up the world - and then blew its mind.