Triple Olympic champion Usain Bolt of Jamaica shattered his 200 metres world record, clocking 19.19 seconds to win the world championship gold medal this evening, comfortably beating his previous best of 19.30 run at last year's Beijing Olympics.
Bolt has become the only man ever to hold the 100 and 200 Olympic and world titles as well as the world records at the same time.
Panama's Alonso Edward was second and American Wallace Spearmon third.
The top five sprinters all clocked under 20 seconds.
"I thought it won't hurt to try so I went at it really hard and now I'm really tired," Bolt told the BBC.
"I was trying, I was dying. It wasn't a good race I can say but it was a fast one."
Bolt, a day short of his 23rd birthday, was unfazed by a false start triggered by Frenchman David Alerte and played up to the cameras in his usual way.
Once the starter's pistol went off, the Jamaican bolted from the blocks and within 20 metres he had grabbed the lead he would never relinquish.
He raced down the straight well ahead of everyone else, with only the clock to beat. He caught a glimpse of his time just at the finish line and saw that 11 hundredths had been knocked off yet again.
Bolt had also demolished his own 100 world record on Sunday, taking off 11 hundredths to clock the stunning time of 9.58.
"I was just waiting for the lights to flash Game Over because I was in a video game," said fourth-placed Shawn Crawford of the United States.
Men's 200m result
1. Usain Bolt (Jamaica) 19.19 seconds WR
2. Alonso Edward (Panama) 19.81
3. Wallace Spearmon (US) 19.85
4. Shawn Crawford (US) 19.89
5. Steve Mullings (Jamaica) 19.98
6. Charles Clark (US) 20.39
7. Ramil Guliyev (Azerbaijan) 20.61
8. David Alerte (France) 20.68