Day 8: August 16
| Wikinews has related news: Usain Bolt sets new world record in 100m sprint |
- General
- New Zealand experienced their most successful day at an Olympics (with two gold, one silver, and two bronze medals), beating their previous best of four bronze medals in the 1988 Seoul Olympics.
- Athletics
- Russia's Valeriy Borchin won gold in the men's 20 km walk with a time of 1:19:01, edging out Jefferson Pérez, the world champion since 2003, by only 14 seconds.
- Jamaica's Usain Bolt won the gold medal in the men's 100m with a world record of 9.69 seconds in a race dubbed by Michael Johnson as "the greatest 100m performance in the history of the event".
- Badminton
- Zhang Ning successfully defended her women's singles Olympic title against top seed Xie Xingfang.
- Rowing
- The British team of Tom James, Steve Williams, Peter Reed and Andrew Triggs-Hodge won the men's coxless fours, the third time in a row that Great Britain had won gold in this event.
- New Zealand's Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell successfully defended their 2004 title in the women's double sculls by beating Germany by 0.01 seconds.
- Georgeta Andrunache of Romania won gold in the final women's coxless pair race, her fifth career gold, and her third consecutive Olympic gold in that event.
- Swimming
- Michael Phelps' victory by 0.01 seconds in the men's 100 m butterfly over Serbian swimmer Milorad Čavić tied him with Mark Spitz for the most Olympic gold medals at one games.
- César Cielo Filho won the men's 50 m freestyle, Brazil's first ever swimming Olympic gold medal.
- Rebecca Adlington won gold in the women's 800 m freestyle, breaking a world record that had stood since 1989.
- Tennis
- Roger Federer won his first Olympic medal by teaming up with Stanislas Wawrinka to win men's doubles for Switzerland.
- Weightlifting
- Jang Mi-Ran of South Korea won the unlimited (+75 kg) division of women's weightlifting by breaking world records five times: once in snatch, twice in clean-and-jerk, and twice in total.
- Wrestling
- Carol Huynh of Canada won the first medal of the games for Canada and became the first gold medalist in women's wrestling for Canada.
| Gold medalists | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sport | Event | Competitor(s) | NOC | Rec | Ref |
| Athletics | Men's 100 m | Usain Bolt | Jamaica | WR | |
| Men's 20 km walk | Valeriy Borchin | Russia | |||
| Women's heptathlon | Natalya Dobrynska | Ukraine | |||
| Women's shot put | Valerie Vili | New Zealand | |||
| Badminton | Men's doubles | Markis Kido and Hendra Setiawan | Indonesia | ||
| Women's singles | Zhang Ning | China | |||
| Cycling | Men's individual pursuit | Bradley Wiggins | Great Britain | ||
| Men's Keirin | Chris Hoy | Great Britain | |||
| Men's points race | Joan Llaneras | Spain | |||
| Fencing | Women's team foil | Svetlana Boiko, Aida Chanaeva, Victoria Nikichina, Evgenia Lamonova |
Russia | ||
| Rowing | Men's single sculls | Olaf Tufte | Norway | ||
| Men's double sculls | David Crawshay and Scott Brennan | Australia | |||
| Men's coxless pair | Drew Ginn and Duncan Free | Australia | |||
| Men's coxless four | Tom James, Steve Williams, Peter Reed, Andrew Triggs-Hodge |
Great Britain | |||
| Women's single sculls | Rumyana Neykova | Bulgaria | |||
| Women's double sculls | Georgina Evers-Swindell and Caroline Evers-Swindell | New Zealand | |||
| Women's coxless pair | Georgeta Andrunache and Viorica Susanu | Romania | |||
| Shooting | Men's 25 m rapid fire pistol | Oleksandr Petriv | Ukraine | OR | |
| Men's skeet | Vincent Hancock | United States | OR | ||
| Swimming | Men's 50 m freestyle | César Cielo Filho | Brazil | OR | |
| Men's 100 m butterfly | Michael Phelps | United States | OR | ||
| Women's 200 m backstroke | Kirsty Coventry | Zimbabwe | WR | ||
| Women's 800 m freestyle | Rebecca Adlington | Great Britain | WR | ||
| Tennis | Men's doubles | Roger Federer and Stanislas Wawrinka | Switzerland | ||
| Weightlifting | Women's +75 kg | Jang Mi-Ran | South Korea | WR | |
| Wrestling | Women's freestyle 48 kg | Carol Huynh | Canada | ||
| Women's freestyle 55 kg | Saori Yoshida | Japan | |||
Read more about this topic: Chronological Summary Of The 2008 Summer Olympics
Famous quotes containing the words day and/or august:
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With all the blue Ethereal Sky,
And spangled Heav’ns, a Shining Frame,
Their great Original proclaim:
Th’ unwearied Sun, from day to day,
Does his Creator’s Pow’r display,
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The Work of an Almighty Hand.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)
“Ancient of days! august Athena! where,
Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul?
Gone—glimmering through the dream of things that were.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)