Machel Ce­de­nio ran the race of his life to fin­ish fourth, just miss­ing out on a bronze medal, in the men's 400 me­tres fi­nal at the Rio Olympics last night.

In the process, Ce­de­nio erased Ian Mor­ris' 24-year old record with a smash­ing 44.01 per­for­mance, in a race which was won by South Africa's Wayne van Niek­erk in a new world record time of 43.03.

The pre­vi­ous record was held by Amer­i­can Michael John­son, with a time of 43.18 sec­onds which was es­tab­lished in Sevil­la, Spain, 1999.

Pre-race favourite and de­fend­ing Olympic cham­pi­on Kerani James fin­ished sec­ond in 43.76, while Amer­i­can LaShawn Mer­ritt grabbed the bronze, clock­ing 43.85, just ahead of Ce­de­nio.

Ce­de­nio, who ran from lane three, bet­tered Mor­ris' record of 44.21, which was es­tab­lished at the Barcelona Games in 1992. Mor­ris just failed to hold off Kenyan Sam­son Ki­tur for the bronze medal.

The oth­er fi­nal­ists were Karabo Siban­do of Botswana who fin­ished fifth (44.25); sixth placed Ali Khamis of Bahrain (44.36), Grena­da's Bralon Ta­plin (44.45) and Math­ew Hud­son-Smith, GBR (44.61)

Ce­de­nio put in his best work at the fin­ish clos­ing in on Mer­ritt and James as he chased down the lead­ers in the straight but just could not pull out that lit­tle ex­tra to get among the medals.Iron­i­cal­ly, van Niek­erk was the man whom Ce­de­nio beat in the semi­fi­nal when he clocked 44.39 sec­onds.

"I ran my race and I won and now I will have to en­sure that I do every­thing nec­es­sary to run my best race on Sun­day. I know that there are prob­a­bly go­ing to be men faster than me in the fi­nals but all I can do is qual­i­fy as I have done and give it my best," Ce­de­nio said af­ter his semi­fi­nal fin­ish on Sat­ur­day.

"I am feel­ing good, train­ing well, lov­ing the at­mos­phere, and just try­ing to en­joy my run­ning while stay­ing fo­cused. I will just try to get some rest and leave every­thing else up to the day and just do my part, I am hav­ing fun and that helps and the rest of the team is ful­ly sup­port­ing me," he added.

Ce­de­nio said he need­ed a time be­low 44 to medal. "I feel I have that in me and am look­ing for­ward to just go­ing out to­mor­row night and putting every­thing out. This rest will help."

Ce­de­nio was thank­ful for the sup­port from the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. "That re­al­ly kept me more mo­ti­vat­ed to do well for my coun­try. This is my first Olympics and I want­ed to make it mem­o­rable," he added

In the 100 me­tres fi­nal, Us­ain Bolt be­came the first per­son to win three straight Olympic 100-me­tres ti­tles, blow­ing down the straight­away in 9.81 sec­onds for his sev­enth over­all Olympic gold.

Amer­i­can Justin Gatlin, Bolt's clos­est pur­suer over the past four years, fin­ished sec­ond–.08 sec­onds be­hind. An­dre de Grasse of Cana­da won the bronze.Bolt came in­to the Olympics not hav­ing run a 100 since June 30, when he pulled out of the Ja­maican na­tion­al cham­pi­onships with a bad left ham­string.

The re­hab be­gan im­me­di­ate­ly, and on a mug­gy Sun­day night in Rio, the shin­ing star of track and field showed no signs of dis­tress.Af­ter a typ­i­cal­ly clunky burst out of the start­ing block, he start­ed pulling away from Gatlin with about 30 me­tres left.He's not done. Qual­i­fy­ing for the men's 200, his favourite race, starts to­mor­row, with the re­lay on Fri­day.

How they fin­ished in the 400

1. Wayde van Niek­erk, South Africa (43.03 sec­onds WR)

2. Ki­rani James, Grena­da (43.76)

3. LaShawn Mer­ritt, USA (43.85)

4. Machel Ce­de­nio, T&T (44.01)

5. Karabo Siban­do, Botswana (44.25)

6. Ali Khamis, Bahrain (44.36)

7. Bralon Ta­plin, Grena­da (44.45)

8. Math­ew Hud­son-Smith, GBR(44.61)