Usain Bolt duly added the World Youth 200 metres title to the World Junior title he won at the same distance a year ago in Kingston with a display of overwhelming power.
With the final staged in atrocious conditions of rain and run into a 1.1 metre per second wind, Bolt, 1.99m (6ft 5in) and drawn in lane three, clearly had some trouble just holding the curve with his gigantic strides on the wet track.
Yet he had overtaken the stagger within 80 metres on his biggest rival, Michael Grant, of the United States.
Off the bend, Bolt was finally able to unravel his stride to best effect, and for the first time this week we saw the Jamaican teenager really turn on maximum effort. It is an awesome sight.
Bolt stopped the clock at 20.40sec. Given better conditions, it cannot be long before Bolt dips inside 20sec - and the Jamaican selectors may now have to consider whether to include this precocious talent in their team for the senior World Championships in Paris next month.
Behind Bolt, Grant achieved some compensation for his disqualification in the 100m semi-finals with a silver medal in 21.04, while nearly a full second behind the winner, Jamahl Alert-Khan, in 21.35, won Britain’s third bronze medal of the Championships.
