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BEIJING : Usain Bolt raced to his third Olympic gold with a third world record here Friday while Bryan Clay claimed the title of 'The World's Best All Around Athlete' when he won the exhausting decathlon title.
Clay mastered the two-day test of speed, strength and endurance to win the decathlon by a decisive 240 points from Andrey Krauchanka of Belarus.
Bolt, who has announced himself as the unrivalled speed king, added to his world-record breaking 100m and 200m titles running the third leg for the Jamaican 4x100m relay team.
They clocked 37.10secs, breaking the United States' 15-year-old record by 0.30sec as Asafa Powell hurtled over the final 100m
"It's a great feeling," said Powell.
"I was really excited to go out there and give Usain his third world record."
But having already won the men's and women's 100m and 200m titles, Jamaica's craving for every sprint crown came unstuck when their women dropped the baton when holding a clear lead in the 4x100m final, handing victory to Russia.
Tirunesh Dibaba added to the superb triumphs of Bolt and Clay when the 1.6m (5ft 4in) Ethiopian produced a withering final lap to add the women's 5000m gold to the 10,000m title she won last week.
Dibaba, 23, clocked a startling 59.54sec for the final 400m to complete the first long-distance double in 28 years.
On the down side, Lyudmila Blonska was stripped of her heptathlon silver medal and thrown out of the long jump final for failing a drugs test, which proved a bonus of Nigerian Blessing Okagbare who replaced the Ukraine in the long jump and won bronze.
Winner Maurren Maggi gave Brazil their first women's track and field gold.
The 30-year-old, Blonska, who has already served a two year ban after testing positive for a steroid in 2003, now faces a life ban.
The IOC also ordered an investigation into alleged age-fixing of Chinese gymnasts after persistent media claims that double gymnastics gold-medallist He Kexin is only 14, two years shy of the sport's minimum age requirement of 16 at the Olympics.
Despite rumbling concerns through the Games that He, and possibly two other Chinese gymnasts were only 14, He produced a passport showing she turned 16 this year as required.
China has spent more than 40 billion dollars on the Beijing Olympics to underscore their emergence as a global sporting power.
The returns on the investment are obvious. With two days remaining, their best-ever Olympic performance sees China topping the medals table with 47 gold, over the United States on 31, with Great Britain on 18 and Russia 17.
Friday was a lean day for China with Zhang Yining winning their sole gold in the women's singles table tennis final, while the United States won two with Clay and the men's beach volleyball team.
Tim Brabants continued Great Britain's penchant for winning sitting down when he took the K1 1000m Kayak singles final.
Christine Ohuruogu, the women's 400m winner, is the only one of Britain's 18 gold medallists to be on her feet at the finish line.
In men's football, five-times world champions Brazil, stung by their semi-final loss to Argentina denying them a chance for a first Olympic gold, bounced back to beat Belgium 3-0 in the play-off for the bronze medal.
Cuba crushed their ideological rivals the United States 10-2 in baseball to reach a gold showdown with South Korea in Saturday's final.
BMX cycling made its Olympic debut with Maris Strombergs claiming Latvia's first gold medal in Beijing in the men's final and 30-year-old Anne-Caroline Chausson coming out of retirement to win France the women's gold.
There was further scandal at the equestrian events in Hong Kong where failed dope tests by four horses in the individual jumping final cast doubt on the future of elite horse sports in the Games.
- AFP /ls
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