Scenes from the Bird’s Nest – August 22

The action continued at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing on Friday. Here are the results:

In the women’s 5000m event, Ethiopa’s Tirunesh Dibaba Kenene took the Gold Medal, her second of the Beijing Olympic Games. She was followed to the finish line by Elvan Abeylegesse of Turkey for the Silver Medal and Meseret Defar Tola of Ethiopia for the Bronze Medal.

Dibaba also won the Gold Medal in the women’s 10,000 event. She is the first woman to win both long distance events in a single Olympics. American Kara Goucher finished ninth.

In the womens long jump competition, Brazil’s Maurren Higa Maggi took the Gold Medal. The Silver Medal went to defending Olympic champion, Tatiana Debedeva of Russia and the Bronze Medal was awarded to Blessing Okhagbare of Nigeria.

In the women’s 4×100m relay, the drama continued as the Jamaican women botched the hand-off in the final race, causing them the favorites to be disqualified and ruining the Jamaica’s hopes of a perfect eight for eight Gold Medals in the sprinting events. The Russian women prevailed to win the Gold Medal, followed by the Belgians for the Silver and the Nigerian team for the Bronze Medal.

It was all business to the Jamaican men in the 4×100m relay. The team, including Usain Bolt, easily bested the field and set a new world record time of 37.10. It was the third Olympic Gold Medal in Beijing for Bolt.

The men from Trinidad and Tobago took the Silver Medal and the Japanese team took the Bronze Medal.

Australian, Steve Hooker set a new Olympic record of 5.96m/16-6.5 with his Gold Medal performance in the pole vault. Evgeny LUkyanenko of Russia took the Silver Medal and Denys Yurchenko of Ukraine took the Bronze Medal.