2016 Olympics: It's a Jamaican blast in 100m as Thompson beats Fraser-Pryce

(From L) Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, USA's Tori Bowie and Jamaica's Elaine Thompson compete in the Women's 100m Final during the athletics event at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Rio de Janeiro on August 13, 2016.

The new Olympic champion caught her country's flag from out of the stands, unfurled it and fumbled a bit as she tried to drape it over her shoulders. She knew exactly where to turn for help.
Jamaica's newest sprint champion is Elaine Thompson, and she was more than happy to let Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce place that green-and-yellow Jamaican flag over her shoulders after denying her friend and training partner a record third straight title in the 100 metres on Saturday.
"When I crossed the line and glanced around to see I was clear, I didn't quite know how to celebrate," Thompson said after she routed the field in 10.71 seconds, with Fraser-Pryce taking bronze.
The nation that produced the once-in-a-lifetime sprinter in Usain Bolt has more of a production line going on the women's side. Thompson joins the likes of Merlene Ottey, Veronica Campbell-Brown and, of course, Fraser-Pryce in the island country's long line of sprinting luminaries.
At 24, more than five years younger than the woman she unseated, Thompson showed a changing of the guard doesn't have to mean a redrawing of the map.
"Jamaica has so many talented sprinters," Thompson said. "To be the second champion (at 100 metres), I'm really happy." What was billed as one of the most competitive finals in the history of the event turned into something of a non-race. Thompson made it that way.
Running about level halfway through the 100 metres, she pulled away from American Tori Bowie for a .12-second victory - a gap big enough to scoot a bookcase between her and the American.
Thompson's 10.71 was only .01 off the time she ran at Jamaica's national championships last month. That 10.70 in Kingston was the best of five sub-10.8 women's sprints this year and served notice that things could be very fast when the sprinters reached Rio de Janeiro.
Three of those sub-10.8 women were in the final - Bowie and another American, English Gardner, were the others - as was Fraser-Pryce, the 29-year-old former champion who was a brace-faced newcomer when she won her first of two golds at the Bird's Nest in Beijing eight years ago.
Thompson will also have a chance in the 200 metres in Rio, giving her an opportunity to win medals in both events the way Fraser-Pryce did four years ago in London.
"I look up to Shelly-Ann so much," Thompson said. "She had a rough season. It's amazing to be with her."
Thompson was dealing with an injury of her own - a strained hamstring that forced her to bail out of the Jamaican nationals.
She was clearly healed once she got to Brazil. In the final, she got stronger as she approached the line and left what had been billed as an uber-competitive field far behind.
Dafne Schippers, the Dutch heptathlete-turned-sprinter, finished fifth, and Gardner, the champion at the US Olympic Trials last month, was two more spots back with a time of 10.94.
"They are not unbeatable," Gardner insisted, when asked about the Jamaicans' persistent dominance in these races.
When the lights are brightest, though, they really are.