Awesome sporting moments of the decade!

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Swimming
Defining moment: Phelps's hopes of winning eight gold medals in Beijing were sinking fast when he trailed Serbia's Milorad Cavic by almost half a body length nearing the end of the 100 metres ****erfly final. But the American took a calculated gamble on his penultimate stroke, rolling his enormous shoulders over once more with a short, sharp lunge


that enabled him to get his fingertips on the wall first by one-hundredth of a second, the smallest possible margin in swimming. That victory gave him his seventh gold medal, equalling the record Mark Spitz set at Munich in 1972, and a day later he scooped up his eighth in the medley relay to set a new landmark.

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Swimming
Race of the decade: It might have been prematurely billed as the "race of the century" but the men's 200 metres freestyle final at the 2004 Athens Olympics really did live up to all the hype and expectation. It was the only time the three best male swimmers of the decade, Michael Phelps, Ian Thorpe and Pieter van den Hoogenband, lined up on the


blocks against each other and the trio provided an enthralling exhibition to match the occasion, leaving other rivals for dead as they fought out the finish. Thorpe won the gold with van den Hoogenband second and Phelps third with less than half a second separating them when they touched the wall.

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Athletics
Athlete of the decade: If ever a sport needed a new hero it was athletics in the opening years of the 21st century and, in the most spectacular surroundings possible, Usain Bolt came roaring to the rescue. At the Beijing Olympics the Jamaican danced across the finish line to take 100 metres gold in world-record time and days later showed


steely determination to win the 200 and beat Michael Johnson's "untouchable" 1996 mark. He added gold in the 4x400m relay, with a third world record.
A year later Bolt, still smiling, scooped all three golds again in the world championships with crushing world records in the 100 and 200m.

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Athletics
Defining moment: Marion Jones was the golden girl and smiling face of the 2000 Olympics but instead came to represent all that was rotten in the sport when she was sentenced to six months in jail on January 11, 2008, for lying about using performance-enhancing drugs.


Jones won the 100m and 200m and ran an astonishing third leg to help the United States win the 4x400m relay in Sydney, as well as taking two bronzes, but, with former partners including convicted dopers CJ Hunter and Tim Montgomery, it was with disappointment but little surprise that the athletics world greeted the news that she too had cheated her way to glory.

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Athletics
Race of the decade: Virtually any of Bolt's championship performances could take this accolade but for sheer dizzying quality his 2009 world championship 100 metres victory in a eye-popping 9.58 seconds is difficult to surpass.


Tyson Gay ran 9.71, a time bettered only by Bolt's Beijing world record, but the American was a distant second as Bolt's astonishing time launched a thousand "how fast can man go?" features.