Yelena Isinbayeva underlined her star status by breaking the world record yet again after bagging an inevitable gold medal in the pole vault in the Bird's Nest.

The Russian, somewhere close to royalty in Russia where she counts the likes of Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, and Roman Abramovich, the Chelsea oligarch, as friends, jumped 5.05 metres to break the record which she set in Monaco at the end of last month, which broke the one she set in Rome two weeks earlier. She now has 24 world records and has stated her desire to match the 35 set by Sergey Bubka.

Elsewhere, as China got used to the fact that Liu Xiang, their hurdling hero, had quit the Olympics with a foot injury, Usain Bolt breezed through his 200 metres rounds. Greg Rutherford suffered a disastrous long jump final and then said he had wasted a great chance to win the Olympic title.

Irving Saladino of Panama won with a jump of 8.34 metres, but irritatingly for the Briton, the bronze medal went to Ibrahim Camejo with a leap of 8.20 metres, the same mark that Rutherford managed in Birmingham to qualify for the Olympics. Britain's hopes in the jumps and general now lie with Phillips Idowu, who continued his great season by cruising into Thursday's triple jump final with a leap of 17.44 metres, the best by 10 centimetres.

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Angelo Taylor led a clean sweep for the USA in the 400m hurdles, but the highlight for many was seeing Pamela Jelimo, a Kenyan teenager who only started running the 800 metres this season, take the gold in a world junior record. By the time she gets to London in four years she should be well on the way to legendary status.