It was like a school reunion in which the playground bully was the star turn. Usain Bolt has been partying and travelling since taking the Olympic Games by the scruff of the neck, but he still had enough puff to meet the rest behind the metaphorical bike shed and win the 100 metres at the Weltklasse in Zurich last night.

There were seven of the finalists from 14 days ago present and, for 40 metres, Richard Thompson, the Olympic silver medal-winner, held Bolt. Then the Jamaican rendered the race a scene from Gulliver’s Travels as his legs ate up the ground and the rest were dwarfed by his physical freakery. It is testament to the way that Bolt has redefined the blue-riband event that his time of 9.83sec was scarcely deemed special, but only three others have ever gone faster.

Walter Dix was second with Thompson third, but nobody was too bothered. Bolt has become a superstar within a fortnight and is the only man with that billing in athletics. Jacques Rogge, the IOC president, may want to take note.

Bolt is not the teenage sensation of athletics, though. That billing belongs to Pamela Jelimo, 18, who clinched the first female first track and field Olympic gold for Kenya. Last night, she went for the 800 metres world record and missed it by 0.7sec. Her mark of 1min 54.01sec was the third-fastest in history and it looks a matter of Jelimo maturing before Jarmila Kratochvilova’s 25-year-old record falls. Britain’s Marilyn Okoro was fifth behind Maria Mutola, the retiring legend.

Jelimo remains on target for the Golden League’s prize of $1 million (about £548,000), along with Blanka Vlasic, of Croatia, who won the high jump. To the irritation of Vlasic, who has nine of the ten best jumps this season, the Olympic champion and one blip on that record, Tia Hellebaut, came nowhere.

Sanya Richards was a comfortable winner in the 400 metres, but despite clocking her season’s best of 49.74, she failed to make a point by beating the Olympic-winning time of Christine Ohuruogu. In the men’s, Jeremy Wariner also returned to winning ways, but his defeat of LaShawn Merritt, his American compatriot, in 43.82 will not make amends for the reverse result in Beijing.

Kenenisa Bekele, of Ethiopia, who joined the select band to have won both the Olympic 5,000 and 10,000 metres in Beijing, showed no signs of fatigue by winning the 5,000 metres last night in the best time of the year.

Lyudmila Blonska, the Ukrainian heptathlete, has been given a lifetime ban after testing positive for an anabolic steroid at the Olympics. She was stripped of her silver medal, elevating Kelly Sotherton, of Britain, who has been her fiercest critic, to fourth.