Usain Bolt beats Justin Gatlin again to win 200m world championship gold

Usain Bolt has done it again, winning his fourth consecutive world 200m title with a display of supreme confidence in his fastest time since the Olympic final at London 2012.
Four days after overcoming the odds and a flying Justin Gatlin to retain his 100m title, Bolt ran 19.55sec to best his American rival in the fastest time this year and win his 10th world championship gold. Gatlin, who like Bolt started strongly but was unable to cope when the Jamaican eased away down the home straight, finished second in 19.74.
Looking at their form this season, you might ordinarily have expected Gatlin to be favourite. But there is nothing ordinary about Usain Bolt. After the semi-finals, a reporter asked Gatlin what it would take to come out on top. Turning back and laughing over his shoulder, the 33-year-old said: “It takes to stay in front, that’s what it’s going to take!”
Ultimately, he was never able to do that, despite being neck and neck as they came round the bend as he tried to challenge down the home straight. The South African Anaso Jobodwana was third in 19.87, a new national record.
Bolt and Gatlin will meet again in the 4x100m relay on Saturday night for the third instalment of a head to head that has gripped the Bird’s Nest but also posed a host of complex questions for the sport and those in it. But Bolt has proved that despite an indifferent season, he is unmatched when it comes to the big occasion.
It seems extraordinary the pair had faced each other only once before over 200m and that was a decade ago, Gatlin winning in Helsinki in 2005. Ten years later, four of which the American sat out after serving a four-year ban for testing positive for testosterone, an awful lot of water had passed under the bridge.
Bolt came into the race off the back of that confidence-boosting victory in the 100m. After that contest Gatlin refused to take any questions on his doping past and subsequently said he would not speak to the BBC over its styling of the race as a “battle of good versus evil”.
Before the 200m, a relaxed-looking Bolt kissed the Jamaica badge on his vest and held his fingers in a V for victory sign. It was to prove prophetic.
Bolt had not gone under 20 seconds over the distance in 2015 before he arrived in Beijing but dipped beneath that mark in the semi-final. But nor had he lost in the 200m at a major championships since 2007, before his jaw-dropping arrival on the world stage at this stadium at the 2008 Olympics.
Two months ago, Bolt – struggling with joint issues - laboured to victory in his only 200m of the season in New York. Just behind him on that occasion was Zharnel Hughes, the Anguilla-born British athlete who became the youngest sprinter to win a Diamond League 200m when he triumphed in Lausanne this year.
Hughes, who trains with Bolt’s group in Jamaica, formally gaining British citizenship in June this year, finished fifth in a personal best of 20.02.