TOKYO — 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 also done so by shattering Florence Griffith Joyner’s Olympic record set in 1988. (Thompson-Herah’s official time 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.