Track and Field Highlights and the Top 10 Nations of the 2008 Olympics
By Bidz dela Cruz
The Beijing Olympics is a great show of super power for nations worldwide. How nations train and support their athletes translates already to the technological capabilities and high social standards each nation have. And thus, the picture of who's the top 10 super power nations was concluded in the Beijing Olympics, refer to the table below:
COUNTRY GOLD SILVER BRONZE TOTAL
United States 36 38 36 110
China 51 21 28 100
Russia 23 21 28 72
Great Britain 19 13 15 47
Australia 14 15 17 46
Germany 16 10 15 41
France 7 16 17 40
South Korea 13 10 8 31
Italy 8 10 10 28
Ukraine 7 5 15 27
With United States of America still proving that it is the world's top super power nation with most number of won medals (110), China wont be easily ignored as it dominated the games with most number of golds (51). 15 more golds than that of the USA. And while both nations are already celebrating, we should not set aside some countries who made the Olympics a spectacular show. Even if Jamaica didn't make it to the top 10 in this Olympics, it showed the whole world how fast its citizens are. Jamaica dominated the track events. One of the major highlights of the track and field event is Usain Bolt. He made the already popular Bird's Nest more popular by breaking records and making a great show in his races in the newly constructed stadium.
Usain's 100m finals was supposed to be "the marquee" event of the track and field event. It turned out to be, but not exactly in the fashion that it was expected.
Tyson Gay, didn't make it to the finals. He finished 5th in the semifinals. So the finals was left between the world-record holder Usain Bolt (9.72 secs, his world record before the Olympics) and the immediate former world-record holder Asafa Powell, a fellow Jamaican (with 9.74 secs).
What we get is maybe the greatest 100 meter dash ever. Usain Bolt wins a world record fashion: 9.69 secs blowing away the field. He wasn't even running hard at the end, he was looking around, he was pounding his chest. Who knows what the record would be if he had run hard all the way to the finish line. You got to remember this is a guy who just started running 100 meter dashes in the last few months. He was a 200-meter specialist. He is much taller than your typical 100-meter specialist. He's 6 foot 5. He blew away the field. He is the 3rd Jamaican-born sprinter to win the gold medal in this event since 1992 but the 1st to do it representing Jamaica. Donovan Bailey won in 1996, he was representing Canada, and in 1992, Linford Christie won representing Great Britain. We are not even counting Ben Johnson who of course crossed the finish line 1st in 1988 in Seoul, but was stripped of his gold medal, and he too like Bailey was representing Canada.
