Men's
100m
World Record
9.58
Usain Bolt
August 16th 2009
IAAF World Championships
Berlin, Germany
He was talking it down beforehand, but he knew. One year to the day on from Beijing, with the World once again anticipating something special, the Lightning Bolt produced the goods when it mattered most. Pushed harder than he’d ever been pushed by a highly motivated Tyson Gay, Bolt rocked out of the blocks with Gay on his outside, began his now-familiar surge into the lead by 40m and then simply destroyed the field and his own world record, shredding 0.11s from the 9.69 he’d run in China. As he crossed the line, he stared at the clock before adrenaline carried him another couple of hundred metres, giant arms spread out like wings. He may not have taken off, but that night, Usain Bolt flew.
Women's
100m
World Record
spikesmag player that shows WRecords
10.49
Florence Griffith-Joyner
July 16th 1988
US Olympic Trials
Indianapolis, United States
Controversy dogged ‘Flo-Jo’. The trigger for this was her rapid ascendancy in the 100m around the time of her world record. A 200m silver medallist at the 1984 Olympics, by 1988 she was setting the 100m pace.
Always a flamboyant presence, her ‘costume’ for this quarter-final was a one-legged purple unitard.
Flying off the blocks, she was neck and neck with the lead contenders for the first 50m but then peeled away from the pack to win by a distance — and knock nearly three-tenths off the world record. The new mark was 10.49.
A heavy wind had been whipping around the stadium that day, but, to the surprise of many, the anemometer was reading zero at the time of this race. The record was Flo-Jo’s. It still is.