Six athletics golds, as well as championships to be distributed in diving, women's football, sailing, softball, swimming, taekwondo, wrestling and water polo. First though, this blog would like to make a personal reflection on last night's world record win by a certain Mr. Bolt.

The world record for the 200 meter run should, logically, be more than double that of the 100. The race itself is a more complex physics problem than the simple dash with its staggered start, complete u-turn and the split-second transition from curve to straight. In the mid-1990's, Michael Johnson solved that problem -- emphatically so.

Unlike so many runners before him that, like automobiles, sped in the straightaway but slowed to take the curves, Johnson was capable of bewildering acceleration in the corners. Tilting his body slightly, throwing his chest out and increasing his cadence exponentially, he ended hundreds of races before the final 100 meters began.

At the close of each day of competition, this blog will present the standings and brackets of all active team sports.

Results of the Day 12 competitions.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt has not only pulled the 100m-200m double, he now owns both world records. After the jump, how he broke Michael Johnson's 12-year old record of 19.32 with an electrifying 19.30 second performance for the ages, one that was too fast for the clock.

Carl Lewis was the last to win the sprint double. It's also only the third time that the world record in the 200 was set at the Olympics: Tommie Smith in 1968 (which was quickly followed by this infamous salute), and Johnson in 1996.

Side note: Wallace Spearmon of the United States (bottom lane, No. 9) was so distracted by Bolt that he ran out of his lane, costing him the bronze with a disqualification.

As this blog waits for the 200m to begin (2220 CST), with Usain Bolt playfully faking an injury on the warm-up track, a mid-evening look at some of your favorite team sports.

BASKETBALL: Within the hour, the United States completed a systematic 116-85 destruction of the Australian Boomers in the men's quarterfinals. The Aussies hung around for a quarter, lay one point down after 10 minutes, but the Americans took full advantage of their lack of depth, especially in the frontcourt.

One of the key divergences between the 2008 U.S. Olympic team and the 2004 bronze winners -- a big reason why anything has to be Redeemed -- is the team's attitude. As evident in the United States losses in that tournament, certain NBA stars would try to "take over" games, often to disastrous, embarrassing and unwatchable result. This team knows that an opponent's weaknesses will catchup, and doesn't alter the game plan whenever adversity strikes. Having a bench full of supremely talented (if not globally known) contributors goes a long way towards cementing that confidence.

The men's basketball and handball quarterfinals continue through the day, the Bird's Nest hosts an evening session featuring finals in women's hammer throw, the men's 200 (Usain Bolt!) and the women's 400m hurdles. What else is new?

SYNCHRONIZED SWIMMING: The "two Anastatias," Davydova and Ermakova, won their second consecutive Olympic gold medal in the duet competition. Following up a tribute to Don Quixote in Athens, the Olympic and world champions registered perfect 10's in a fun, frisky performance to Norwegian play music called "Peer Gynt Suite." Other four-minute free routines included a harrowing militaristic tribute by the Ukranians, and a scary, howling opera from Spaniah silver medalists Gemma Mengual and Andrea Fuentes that earned a line of 9.9's. Many competitors danced underwater to pulse-pounding techno.

How slow is it in Beijing on Dead Wednesday? They're having a "Champions Gala" in gymnastics, a non-medal event that was hatched several Olympiads ago and gives American television (which offered no live event footage in prime time today) one more night of the highly-rated sport. Swimming, wrestling and badminton do not have Champions Galas. If you don't have a ticket for that, there are a few other things going on around the rings.

SWIMMING: If you're a bad sportswriter or an unimaginative athlete, you've probably compared something that takes a long time to a "marathon." This offends marathoners, who tend to be an oversensitive lot by nature. The modern Olympic-inspired marathon, roughly the 25-mile distance between Marathon and Athens, is five miles beyond the human body's running threshold and is defined by its defiance of those natural boundaries.

Semantics aside, the women's 6-mile marathon swim is a chore to watch, contemplating about how much of a full-body workout that must be. It's a thrashing, boiling race much at odds with the cool tactics of the 26.2. This morning at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park, it was the first open-water swimming race since the days before specialized indoor swimming stadia.