Usain Bolt wins third gold in Jamaica 4x100m relay victory

Usain Bolt won his third gold medal of the 2012 Olympics as he anchored Jamaica's sprint relay team to a sensational world record.

 

Jamaica's quartet clocked 36.84 seconds to smash the old mark by two-tenths of a second and leave the USA team with silver.

Nesta Carter and Michael Frater produced excellent first and second legs but it was 100m and 200m silver medallist Yohan Blake's blistering third leg that set the platform.

Bolt provided the perfect finale - exploding away to leave Ryan Bailey trailing as the capacity crowd stood to acclaim him.

Canada were initially given bronze before being disqualified when third-leg runner Jared Connaughton was seen to have stepped inside his lane, meaning Trinidad and Tobago were promoted to third place.

Bolt's gold meant he matched his haul from the Beijing Olympics and he now has six Olympic golds before his 26th birthday.

It was a fitting way to conclude a wonderful nine days of athletics in the Olympic Stadium. 

Blake said London 2012 had been "amazing" and on the race added: "It's a wonderful feeling to end on a high note. It was a great championships, I'm happy, the team came out and gave it their all, I wish we could have gone faster but we leave room for improvement."

However, he said he did not know if he would be aiming for a third treble gold haul in Rio 2016: "It's going to be hard. Yohan is running hard and I'm sure there's going to be more young cats coming up."

Bolt has once again been the star of these Games, and in celebrating with a "Mobot" as he crossed the line paid tribute to the great home track hero of the past fortnight, Mo Farah.

bbc