The clock stationed just past the finish line flashed 10.60 seconds and the letters "NEW OR,” meaning "new Olympic record,” when Elaine Thompson-Herah of Jamaica won the women’s 100 meters on Saturday night.
Thompson-Herah had not only retained the 100-meter Olympic title she won in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, but she had done so by shattering Florence Griffith Joyner’s record set in 1988. (Thompson-Herah’s official time in the record books is 10.61.)
One day later, Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy produced an even more stunning time — 9.80 seconds — to win the men’s 100, becoming the surprise winner of the race to supplant Usain Bolt as the world’s fastest man. Jacobs was little known before storming to the fastest time in an Olympic final by a man not named Bolt.