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Bolt can't keep pace with Blake

By Associated Press in Kingston, Jamaica | China Daily | Updated: 2012-07-01 08:47

"The Beast" turned out to be quite an animal.

Not even Usain Bolt can argue with that.

The World's Fastest Man wasn't the fastest man in Jamaica on Friday night.

Instead, that honor was snatched away by Yohan Blake, the man they call "The Beast," who blew away Bolt out of the starting blocks and finished the 100m final in 9.75 sec to upset the world-record holder by 0.11 in the Jamaican Olympic trials.

A shocker? Well, that's for the world to decide. One thing for sure, however, is that the calculus for the London Olympics has changed dramatically.

"Nine-point-seven-five, it's awesome," Blake said. "I won the world championship, so I've got that. Now, I'm the national champion for Jamaica, so I've got that. And now, I go into the Olympics like this."

Blake is, indeed, the reigning world champion, but that victory came with an asterisk because Bolt, the reigning Olympic champion, didn't run that night in South Korea after being disqualified for a false start.

This was their first rematch, the first real race between the training partners since then.

Bolt was considered the favorite, not only because of his world record - 9.58 - but because Blake had never run faster than 9.82 in his life.

Well, now, he has.

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