BEIJING -- Arms churning high, face twisted in pain as he

sprinted toward the finish line, Usain Bolt kept glancing at the

clock.

The win in the Olympic 200 meters was a given, his second gold

medal of the Beijing Games assured.

This was now about a world record. About racing against history.

Showing just what he can do when he goes all out start to

finish, Bolt forged the greatest race ever run Wednesday night

under the hazy lights at the Bird's Nest, heaving his chest toward

the finish line -- not simply to beat someone for the gold, but to

become a part of track's glorious, and sometimes troubled, lore.

He finished in 19.30 seconds to break Michael Johnson's

12-year-old world record, one of the most venerable in the books.

"I just blew my mind and blew the world's mind," Bolt said.

Insane, Usain.

Officially, he won by an astounding 0.66 second over American

Shawn Crawford, the defending Olympic champion. Crawford won the

silver medal when Churandy Martina of Netherlands Antilles, who had

finished 0.52 behind Bolt, was disqualified after a U.S. protest

for running out of his lane. "It feels like a charity case,"

Crawford said.

Either way, it was about four body lengths, the biggest margin

in an Olympic 200.

American Walter Dix was awarded the bronze medal when the third

man across the line, teammate Wallace Spearmon, also was DQ'd for

leaving his lane.

Footnotes to history.

Bolt added the 19.30 -- 0.02 better than Johnson's old mark -- to

the 9.69 he ran the 100 four nights before when he hot-dogged the

final 20 meters to set the world record.

Everyone thought he could've done better in the 100 had he run

hard the whole way, but the 200 has always been Bolt's favorite,

the one he spent his life on, and this time he saved the

showboating for after the race.

"I've been dreaming of this since I was yea high," Bolt said.

"So it means a lot more to me actually than the 100 means."

After the unrelenting effort with a slight headwind in his face,

Bolt sprawled out on the ground, arms and legs outstretched,

basking in the roar of the Bird's Nest crowd and the glow of

becoming, quite possibly, the greatest sprinter ever.

Bolt's name now goes above, or at least beside, every great

sprinter to ever put on spikes.

Usain Bolt ran Wednesday's 200 meter final in 19.30 seconds, breaking Michael Johnson's 12-year-old record of 19.32. AP Photo/David Phillip

He became the first man to win the 100-200 double at the

Olympics since Carl Lewis in 1984.

He gets mentioned in the same breath with Johnson, as well as

Jesse Owens and any of the other six men to complete the Olympic

100-200 double. Nobody other than Johnson had ever run a 200 in

under 19.6 and nobody had broken 9.7 in the 100 before Beijing.

Bolt has done both, the only man ever to break the world record

in both sprints in the same Olympics.

Bolt is simply a different kind of runner -- coiled power in his

6-foot-5 frame, supposedly too big for success in the 100, but

certainly built to run the 200.

"It's his anatomy," said Renaldo Nehemiah, the former world

record-holder in the 110-meter hurdles. "He's just blessed with an

uncanny frame, an uncanny quickness, a huge competitive heart. And

he is having a good time, which I think our sport sorely needs to

see."

Indeed, track and field could use a breath of fresh air after

years of bad news, bad characters and failed drug tests that have

come close to turning the sport into second-tier Olympic viewing.

There are cynics who believe Bolt might be too good to be true

himself. But the Jamaican insists he is clean, that he plays by the

rules, that any improvement he's enjoyed over the last few months

has come courtesy of rededicating himself to his training and

staying off the dance floor he loves so much.