BERLIN–Look­ing around and see­ing no one close in the biggest race of the year, Us­ain Bolt proved again he races in a world all his own.

The Olympic cham­pi­on won a huge matchup against Tyson Gay yes­ter­day at the world cham­pi­onships, beat­ing his chest as he crossed the line and watched the clock stop at 9.58 sec­onds. Look­ing at the clock be­yond the fin­ish line, Bolt even beat time it­self. Run­ning full-out in ide­al con­di­tions and against the tough­est com­pe­ti­tion pos­si­ble for the first time in his 22 years, Bolt blew away his own world record by a mas­sive .11 sec­onds and made Gay seem slow de­spite set­ting a U.S. record of 9.71 sec­onds. "I got a pret­ty good start," Bolt said. "I was there at 20 me­ters and that was it."

It was the biggest in­crease in the record since elec­tron­ic time was in­tro­duced in 1968. Af­ter Jim Hines ran 9.95 at 1968 Mex­i­co City Olympics, it took 28 years to shave an­oth­er .11 sec­onds, as Dono­van Bai­ley clocked 9.84 in 1996. Bolt did the same in 12 months. Ex­act­ly one year ago at the Bei­jing Games, Bolt was breez­ing af­ter 70 me­ters and set a record of 9.69. But on the deep in­di­go blue track of the Olympic Sta­di­um in Berlin, Gay pushed him and his own sore groin as far as he could. To no avail. Gay stayed with him over the first part but once Bolt un­furled that huge stride of his, there was no con­test. Asafa Pow­ell of Ja­maica took bronze in 9.84. "Awe­some," Pow­ell said af­ter the two Ja­maicans danced a jig to cel­e­brate. De­spite the taste of de­feat, Gay smiled through it. "I'm hap­py he got it. I'm so hap­py," Gay said. "I'm hap­py he ran 9.5 be­cause I knew he could do it, and I know I can do it and I'm hap­py for him."

In the stands, the fans car­ry­ing a ban­ner say­ing "Bolt–Leg­end" could not be­lieve be­ing there and to see the pre­dic­tion proved right again. "It is get­ting there, but I don't think sea­sons can do it," Bolt said. "I have to keep do­ing it year af­ter year." Once he sensed an­oth­er gold was his along the fi­nal me­ters, Bolt glanced quick­ly to his right to check on Gay, then at the score­board as he crossed the line, pound­ing his chest when he saw the record time flash up. Bolt said he was not even in top shape, feel­ing bet­ter at the Olympics in Bei­jing last year. He was lucky on April 29 when his sea­son was not ru­ined by a crash when his car skid­ded and flipped. He hurt his foot and it briefly slowed him. "The car ac­ci­dent took me off for a while," he said.

Trou­bled by a nag­ging groin pain, Gay had to cut prac­tice on his start and it showed. He need­ed to get out the fastest by far but was nev­er able to shake the Olympic cham­pi­on. "My groin is bare­ly hang­ing on," Gay said.

If Bolt had al­ready strut­ted his con­fi­dence by play­act­ing for hours ahead of race, the fact that he nev­er saw Gay ahead of him ear­ly on boost­ed him even more. "It just wasn't enough to­day," Gay said. "I ran my best race I could run. I put my all in­to it. I got through the lit­tle groin sit­u­a­tion and tried to put it to­geth­er." The 55,000-strong crowd at the Olympic Sta­di­um on­ly had eyes for Bolt once they saw the time and roared its de­light at the end of most an­tic­i­pat­ed race since the Olympics. The record time was hard to be­lieve even with Bolt's knack of do­ing the un­be­liev­able.

He grabbed a flag, hugged Pow­ell, with whom he had been lit­er­al­ly shad­ow­box­ing for fun just be­fore the start. They wrapped them­selves in the Ja­maican flag, and it looked like Bei­jing all over again. Stay­ing true to his show­man­ship, he reached out to en­rap­tured fans, try­ing to get a grasp how in­stant sport­ing his­to­ry phys­i­cal­ly feels. Ahead of that race, the Ja­maican and Amer­i­can women got their own sprint ri­val­ry go­ing.

Ker­ron Stew­art ran 10.92 in the 100 for the best time, lead­ing a Ja­maican team ef­fort which placed three of their run­ners in the top four.

Carmeli­ta Jeter of the Unit­ed States was the on­ly one able to split the trio, run­ning 10.94 for sec­ond place. The fi­nal is set for Mon­day.

Over­all, Ja­maica won five of six sprint ti­tles at the Bei­jing Olympics and left the U.S. team with­out a sin­gle gold. Now, Bolt made it 1-0 for Ja­maica.