| Advertisement |
LONDON, Aug. 5 (UPI) -- Andy Murray beat the best in the tennis business Sunday, but nobody could come close to the best sprinter in history. In two very different types of Olympic athletic contests, one champion was overwhelmed and another demonstrated he is nowhere close to giving up the spotlight.
Advertisement
Murray gave Britain another gold medal Sunday with a stunningly one-sided victory on Wimbledon's Centre Court over Roger Federer, the man who has won more major tennis championships than anybody else.
A few hours later, with anticipation building that there might be another big upset, Jamaica's Usain Bolt ran away from the field and emphatically enhanced his reputation as the world's fastest human.
As the London Games passed their midway point, the Olympics bid farewell to the badminton tournament and its accompanying scandal and welcomed new medal record holders in both diving and sailing.
A Kenyan runner extended that country's winning streak in the men's steeplechase to eight straight Olympics and Kazakhstan extended its streak of winning nothing but gold medals.
Murray went up against Federer at Wimbledon last month and lost in a major championship final for the fourth time.
With the Olympic gold medal on the line in a rematch Sunday, Murray was dominant. He walked away with a 6-2, 6-1, 6-4 victory that was helped along by Federer's 31 unforced errors. Federer had nine break points on Murray's serve and did not win any of them.
The only disappointing thing about Murray's day was that he and mixed doubles partner Laura Robson had to settle for a silver medal in a loss to Victoria Azarenka and Max Mirnyi of Belarus.
The men's 100-meter dash final is always held on the middle weekend of the Games and this year's race had been anxiously anticipated ever since Bolt lost in the Jamaican Olympic trials to Yohan Blake.
Blake made it safely through the qualifying heats and was ready to challenge Blot Sunday, but so were three Americans who turned in outstanding performances in the semifinals.
As it turned out, they never had a chance. When Bolt put it into overdrive at the midway point of the race, he separated himself from the rest of the field. His winning time of 9.63 was 0.06 of a second faster than he ran in winning the gold medal in Beijing, but 0.05 of a second slower than his world record.
Blake and American Justin Gatlin both ran as fast as they ever have in winning the silver and bronze medals and they still could not keep up.
Through the weekend, Olympic sports began winding down -- including swimming, judo, rowing and badminton. The last of the badminton medals were handed out Sunday with China's Lin Dan capturing the men's singles.
China swept the five medals in badminton, but two Chinese were among the eight players expelled from the games for attempted match fixing. That is likely to bring about changes in the tournament structure prior to the next Olympics.
China also won its fifth diving event in as many tries, getting a gold medal from Wu Minxia in the springboard event. It was the sixth medal of her Olympic career, equaling the most ever in diving.
Britain's Ben Ainsle also became the most decorated sailor in Olympic history with his sixth medal. The latest one was a gold in the Finn class, where he rallied in the medal race to win an event in which he had trailed since it started on July 29.
The country of Kazakstan has also established a first at these Games. It has six medals to its credit and every one of them is gold. No country in the history of the Olympics has won that many medals without at least one of them being a silver or bronze.
One of the safest bests at any Olympics is that a Kenyan will win the steeplechase and this time it was Ezekiel Kemboi. The last time a Kenyan did not win the steeplechase was in 1980, when much of the world boycotted the Moscow Games.
Americans were not at those Olympics and that is also the last and only time a U.S. 400-meter runner did not participate in the finals of that event -- until now. The last American in this year's event failed to make it out of the semifinals Sunday.
An absence of Americans in that race is almost unthinkable since there was a U.S. sweep of the medals in the 400 in both Beijing and Athens.
