Video: watch Usain Bolt in the 100metres final

In the bowels of the Bird's Nest stood a grey-haired man quoting General Patton and likening Usain Bolt to Marian Anderson, the contralto famed for performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Yet this man was Jamaican and dismissive of American lures, citing the racism he suffered there to the drugs his athletes took as reasons for staying home. All this while, the debate raged about Jamaica's lack of an anti-doping federation.

“When I studied in the States, I thought, ‘I don't need your condescending crap',” he said. “Now they still think we don't know anything down in Jamaica.” They clearly know something and Herb Elliott, the Jamaican team doctor and member of the IAAF anti-doping commission, invited the suspicious to investigate. “Come down and see our programme, come down and see our testing, we have nothing to hide,” he said after Bolt had just changed the parameters of the 100 metres by dipping below 9.7 seconds.

“Those [Jamaican] people who got caught were training abroad. They were not strong enough. I don't know of any Jamaican doctor who has given an anabolic steroid injection, but others have sold their soul.” While it sounds simplistic to suggest Jamaican-born athletes such as Trevor Graham, Ben Johnson and Linford Christie ran into trouble only because they left a drug-free haven, Glen Mills, Bolt's coach, said that a positive test would force Bolt to flee his homeland. “Jamaica's a violent place,” he said. The new sensation has been tested seven times since he has been in Beijing, but Elliott says that the IOC needs to prove that the miracle was real.

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Jamaica celebrated wildly and Bob Marley's son, Julian, played a gig in Beijing. Marc Burns, seventh in the final and a close friend, said that Bolt could run 9.55 and that the rest would need “a small automobile” to keep pace.

Richard Thompson, the runner-up, said: “I could see him slowing down and I was still pumping to the line. He's a phenomenal athlete.” Mills said that the 200 metres remains “his comfort zone”, which is bad news for the others in that field because Bolt slowed down after 80 metres on Saturday, put his arms out in celebration and thumped his heart. “That's me,” he said. “I like to have fun and stay relaxed. I didn't even know I had the record until I'd done my victory lap.” Elliott has known Bolt since he was 10 and paraphrased Patton to explain the laid-back approach. “Any man who dies for his country is a damned fool,” he said. “Better to make the other guy die for his.”

They were dying little deaths all over the track in the greatest 100 metres in history as six men went under ten seconds. “Toscanini said Marian Anderson's contralto voice comes along every 100 years,” Elliott went on. “And a guy like Usain Bolt comes along once a century.”

So how did this happen? Bolt bucks convention. At 6ft 5in, he should be too tall to be a sprinter. “People think you have to be short, strong and stocky to be a great sprinter and Usain Bolt has defied that,” Thompson said. “It's the beginning of something else.” He eats poorly as evinced by his pre-miracle routine. “I never had breakfast,” he said. “I woke up at 11 o'clock, sat around and watched TV, then had some chicken nuggets, slept for two hours, then went back and got some more nuggets.” He completed 9.69sec of magic with a shoelace undone.

Bolt is only 21, but he is no rookie. “People think he came from nowhere, but he won the world junior title when he was 15 and then grew 1½ inches and we had to back off,” Elliott said. Last year, he won silver in the 200metres at the World Championships.

Jamaica has form, too - Don Quarrie's 200 metres title in 1976 being the highlight - but Bolt and Asafa Powell have taken sprinting to a new level, while the women have continued to excel. Much of it is down to Mills and Stephen Francis. Mills has Jamaica's Order of Distinction for his work, and now runs the IAAF-backed High Performance Centre in Kingston. Francis, Powell's coach, is one of the co-founders of MVP (Maximising Velocity and Power), set up in 1999 to stop the brawn drain to the US. “Our athletes were coming back tired and drained after scholarships,” Elliott said.

“It was the same when I was there. You race too much and get burnt out. I'd complain and they'd say I was an uppity black man. Usain doesn't get that bullshit in Jamaica.” The Jamaican Prime Minister phoned Bolt and Powell on Saturday, but the Government was no help when Francis had to sell his car to make ends meet as he tried to keep the best Jamaican talent at home.

It has paid off, but nature is as much a factor as nurture and, according to Burns, Bolt is a freak of it. Unfortunately while Jamaica has no anti-doping federation, there will be lingering suspicion. Whatever, the final was astonishing. Breaking the world record on your fifth senior run at 100 metres was one thing, but this was mesmerising. “He's still got a long way to go,” Mills said.

He also has God on his side. “I pray each night to keep me strong,” Bolt said. “They say He helps them who help themselves.” For his next trick,he may help himself to Michael Johnson's 200metres record.