Usain Bolt ran the 200m in 19.19 at the 2009 World Championships in Berlin. It was a world record, and it came only four days after he had rewritten the 100m mark in the same stadium.
Two sprint records held at the same time
On 20 August 2009, Bolt lined up over the half-lap in Berlin. He had already run 9.58 for 100m earlier that week, so the crowd knew what was possible.
He crossed the line in 19.19, faster than any man had run the distance before. With that single race he held both sprint world records at once.
The two runs sat four days apart in the same arena. First the 100m, then the 200m, each one lower than any figure the sport had recorded. It was the rare case of a single athlete owning both marks together.
Both marks still stand more than a decade on
The Berlin double gave Bolt ownership of the two most watched events in track. No sprinter before him had held both records together in the electronic-timing era.
The 100m run four days earlier was called the largest single improvement of its kind. The 200m mark answered it, and neither has been beaten since.
What followed only deepened the record. Bolt won the 200m world title again in Moscow in 2013 and in Beijing in 2015 in 19.55. He then took a third straight Olympic 200m gold in Rio in 19.78 in 2016, a feat no other sprinter has matched.
His medal haul kept climbing across those years, reaching eleven world championships golds and eight Olympic titles by the time he stopped racing. Yet none of those wins touched the two numbers he set in Berlin.
Berlin remains the peak of that long story. The two times set there still head the record books, quietly outlasting everyone who has chased them.
