Usain Bolt set the Olympic men’s 200 metres record of 19.30 seconds at the 2008 Beijing Games.
Bolt won the final by a substantial margin, finishing ahead of Churandy Martina and Wallace Spearmon. His time improved the Olympic record of 19.32 seconds set by Michael Johnson at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
Bolt’s Beijing performance was especially notable because he had already won the 100 metres several days earlier. He later lowered the global standard for the event to 19.19 seconds at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, but that mark was not an Olympic record because Olympic records concern performances at the Games.
The 19.30 Olympic record remained slower than Bolt’s world record, while still ranking among the most significant sprint performances in Olympic history.