Days after winning the 100 meters, Jamaica’s Elaine Thompson accomplished something that hadn’t been done since 1988.
Thompson took gold in the 200 with a time of 21.78 seconds, beating Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands by one tenth of a second. With the win Thompson becomes the first woman since Florence Griffith-Joyner in 1988 to win both the 100 and 200 in the same Olympics. France’s Maria-Jose Perec won both the 200 and 400 in 1996.
With her silver medal, Schippers became Netherlands’ first medalist in the 200 since Bertha Brouwer took silver at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki.