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The Lightning Bolt has struck twice. Not since Carl Lewis in 1988 had a sprinter defended his Olympic 100m title and Lewis needed Ben Johnson to be disgraced before he could claim gold again. Sensing the expansive spirit of these London Games, Bolt laid down his claim to be the greatest speedster of all time. Usain Bolt crosses the finish line in the men�s 100m final, ahead of countryman Yohan Blake and American Justin Gatlin. Bolt successfully defended his Olympic title with a time of 9.63 seconds. Usain Bolt became only the second man in Olympic history to take a second gold medal in the men's 100m final on Sunday night, blasting to victory in 9.63, knocking five hundredths of a second off the mark he set in Beijing four years ago as he beat Yohan Blake, his fellow Jamaican and training partner, in a race in which the first seven runners went under 10 seconds. The bronze medal was taken by Justin Gatlin, the champion of 2004. Thanks to Jessica Ennis, Bradley Wiggins and one or two local favourites, Bolt may never become the face of London 2012 in the way that he dominated memories of Beijing. But there was still a sense, as there always is with the final of the men's 100 metres, that this was the focal point of the 2012 Olympic Games, the moment most likely to produce a feat of superhuman dimensions. As the eight runners stepped into their blocks, the Olympic stadium seethed with a combination of tension and glee. Four years ago, when he burst into the global consciousness, Bolt loped his way to a world record time of 9.69, which many believed could have been a tenth of a second faster had he not spent the last 20 metres looking for the faces of his friends in the crowd. In Berlin a year later he took the record down to an all but unbelievable 9.58, and that time he was trying. He was trying on Sunday night too, too, and although he prefaced his run with his customary repertoire of cartoon-hero gestures, there was no messing about once the gun had gone off. In repeating his success, Bolt emulated Carl Lewis, who won in Los Angeles in 1984 and was then promoted to victory four years later in Seoul after Ben Johnson was disqualified for a positive drugs test. Beijing was a conquest. This was an exercise in relief. Even Bolt could not have been sure that his body would deliver him for his traditional mid-race surge. His starts are seldom impressive. His mid-track recoveries are almost always ominous. And the lengthening of his stride over the last 20 metres is unanswerable. Afterwards he drew his imaginary bow back and fired at the London sky. �Usain, Usain,� the crowd chanted. The pleasures never cease in this Stratford stadium. Sent off by 61-year-old Alan Bell from County Durham, who also fired the gun when Bolt false-started at the 2011 Daegu World Championships, the Americans Gatlin, Tyson Gay and Ryan Bailey squared up to a trio of Jamaicans: Bolt, Blake and Asafa Powell. The rest of the world was meagrely represented by Holland�s Churandy Martina and Richard Thompson from Trinidad and Tobago. Jamaica had already won the women�s 100m with Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the first to retain the Olympic title since Gail Devers in 1992 and 1996. Goaded by American sprint legends in the build-up, Bolt and Blake were both a Jamaican team and mortal rivals, fighting for supremacy in an event still clouded by the outrages of the past.