Usain Bolt pulls off the gold medal treble with Jamaican 4x100 win
Usain Bolt completed the gold medal treble in the 100-meter dash, 200-meter run and 4x100-meter relay for the fifth time in his career as the Jamaican sprints squad finished in 37.36 seconds for gold at the IAAF World Championships in Beijing on Saturday.
Bolt and Jamaica have won every global championship gold medal since the 2008 Summer Olympics. Bolt has won individual gold medals in the men's 100-meters and 200-meters at the 2008 Olympics, '09 world championships, '12 Olympics, '13 world championships and '15 world championships to accompany his relay success.
The United States finished second and was later disqualified after an exchange zone violation, where Tyson Gay handed over the baton to anchor Michael Rodgers too late. The U.S. men were celebrating on the track before being informed of their disqualification. Rodgers took the blame for the bad handoff by posting the following message on Twitter: “I don't make to (sic) many mistakes and I never make excuses I'll take the blame for this one, Ima (sic) learn from it and move on!”
Bolt said the pressure of winning gold after defeating the Jamaicans at the World Relays, which is not considered a global championship, caught up to the U.S. men.
"They won in World Relays so the pressure is on them to come win, to deliver and you saw what happened,” Bolt told Eurosport after the race.
America's string of bad luck in the 4x100-meter relays continues after the team was disqualified at the 2013 world championships, were forced to return their silver medals from the '12 Olympics due to a doping suspension by Gay, failed to finish at the '11 world championships due to a collision, were disqualified in the first round of the '09 world championships and failed to finish at the '08 Summer Games.
China won its first medal in the relays at a global championships with their 38.01-second performance for third place, which was upgraded to silver with the U.S. disqualification.
Watch Bolt win his third gold medal of the championship below:
The Jamaican women also took the 4x100-meter crown as Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce anchored the team to a 41.07-second finish. The performance is the second-fastest women's 4x100-meter relay of all-time just behind the United States's 40.82 at the 2012 Summer Games in London. It was Fraser-Pryce's seventh world championship gold medal.
Allyson Felix and the United States women finished second for silver in 41.68. Trinidad and Tobago finished third for bronze in 42.03.
Men's decathlon: Ashton Eaton set a new world record of 9045 points over the 10 events. He needed to run 4:18.25 or faster in the 1,500-meter run to better his previous world record of 4039. He crossed the finish line in 4:17.52 and collapsed to the ground before celebrating.
• Watch: Ashton Eaton break his own decathlon world record
Men's 5,000-meter final: There was very little attempt to dethrone Mo Farah as the men's 5,000-meter champion until there were 800 meters remaining in the race and by then it was too little, too late. Farah finished off his triple double of winning the 5,000-meter and 10,000-meter races at the 2012 Olympic Games, '13 world championships and '15 world championships with a 13.50-minute performance.
Farah will head into the 2016 Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro as the reigning world and Olympic champion in both distances.
The race got off to a pedestrian pace and crossed the 2,500-meter marker in 7:24. There were no Kenyan or Ethiopian tactics in play to shift pacing duties among each other as Great Britain's Tom Farrell found himself leading the early laps.
Kenyan Caleb Ndiku inserted a surge into the pace with two laps remaining, but Farah blew past him in the final 200 meters to cross the finish line first. Ndiku won his first global championship outdoor medal with a 13:51.75 performance for silver.
Ethiopian Hagos Gebriwhet, who took silver in 2013, finished third for bronze in 13:51.86.
Of Farah's three victories at an Olympics or world championship, Saturday night's run in Beijing was his slowest to win a gold medal.
Americans Galen Rupp (13:53.90), Ben True (13:54.07) and Ryan Hill (13:55.10) finished fifth, sixth and seventh respectively.
Watch Farah win his second gold medal of the 2015 world championships:
Women's 800-meter final: Maryna Arzamasova of Belarus upset the world's fastest 800-meter runner of the year in Kenya's Eunice Sum (1:56.99 SB) to win her first global championship medal in 1:58.03. Sum faded to bronze in the final 100 meters as she finished third in 1:58.18. Canadian Melissa Bishop capped off an impressive campaign where she set a personal best of 1:59.52 in July, won the Pan American Games 800-meter gold medal, set a new Canadian national record of 1:57.52 in the world championship semifinal before taking silver with a 1:58.12 performance.
Women's high jump final: Russia's Maria Kuchina won gold with a personal best clearance at 2.01 meters to match her 2014 world indoor gold medal. Two-time world champion Blanka Vlašić of Croatia also cleared 2.01 meters for silver. Anna Chicherova won bronze, as the second- and third-place podium finishers were the same athletes to medal in the Bird's Nest at the 2008 Olympics.
Men's discus final: Poland's Piotr Małachowski's throw of 67.40 meters, on his second attempt of the night, was good enough for a gold medal. Malachowski won silver in the Bird's Nest just seven years ago and never won a gold medal at a global championship until Saturday. Philip Milanov, 24, set a new Belgian national record with his 66.90-meter throw for silver. Poland also took bronze with Robert Urbanek finishing third.
Medals: Seven finals remain to be contested. The United States leads with 16 overall medals, including five golds. Kenya and Jamaica are tied with the most gold medals at six each. Kenya has four silver and three bronze medals to put them on top of the medals by color standing.
Sunday's finals (All times ET): Women's marathon (Saturday at 7:30 p.m. ), men's high jump (Sunday at 6:30 a.m), women's javelin throw (6:45 a.m.), women's 5,000-meter run (7:15 a.m.), men's 1,500-meters (7:45 a.m.), women's 4x400-meter relay (8:05 a.m.) and the men's 4x400-meter relay (8:25 a.m.)
