WE CAME to see the fastest man on earth. We left convinced we’d seen a man from another planet. Usain Bolt. He may walk among us but he doesn’t run among us.

Even Jesse Owens would have been shaking his head in wonder at what the big Jamaican did in the old Olympic Stadium last night.

If you blinked more than twice you’d have missed it: 100 metres in 9.58 seconds. It wasn’t just a lightening bolt but all the thundering noise that comes with it. It made the 9.69 world record Bolt ran last year in Beijing look positively pedestrian.

It made us think they’d slipped some amphetamine sulphate into our Pilsner at lunchtime.

You don’t knock over one-tenth of a second off the 100 metres world record. Bolt did exactly that, and once again made it look easy – leaving the next two fastest men on earth somewhere back down the track.

Tyson Gay ran one hell of a race himself, improving his American record from 9.77 to 9.71, and still didn’t get a look in. Truth is Gay wouldn’t have beaten Bolt even if he’d been shot out of a canon.

Asafa Powell ran 9.84 for the bronze, and he too was made look very ordinary. Not that long ago Powell was being hailed as the next great Jamaican sprinter. How quickly that all changed.

The most incredible thing about Bolt is that he’s still only 22 and surely some ways off his peak. In sprinting terms he’s even better than the real thing.

“Are you ready? Are you ready?” he mouthed before settling into his blocks.

Just two hours earlier he’d run 9.89 in his semi-final, the fastest ever World Championship qualifier. “The game is on,” he said. Boy, he meant it.

What made this world record, firstly, was his start – probably his best ever. Cool as Jamaican rum on ice. He was ahead of Gay from the gun.

Secondly, unlike, Beijing, he ran right through to the finish. Or just about. A few metres out he glanced to his right. No sign of Gay. So he glanced to his left, looking at the clock just as he crossed the line.

Then came the best part; his celebration. He was down the back straight as the rest of the runners were still coming to a stop, joining Powell for some Jamaican jitterbug, and then posing beside the clock:

NEW WR 9.58.

We counted him taking 36 strides the whole race. Maybe one or two more. 36 strides. Think about that.

“I always come out here to do my best,” he said. “But the energy in here tonight, the noise, the atmosphere, that helped me do it. So thank you, first of all, Berlin.”

Over 30 minutes later he still hadn’t got out of the line of TV interviewers.

Typical Bolt though, playing up to everyone. There are really only two adjectives the star athletes care about anymore; they are “brilliant” and “unbeatable”. Surely now Bolt has a freehold on both of them.

He’ll get a $100,000 bonus for his world record, but that’s small money these days for the biggest name in the history of track and field.

So goes the first World Championship title for the 22-year-old – though certainly not his last. Unless he slips and hurts himself on the dance floor between now and Thursday night he’s sure to add the 200 metres gold medal, and probably the 4x100 metre relay next Saturday.

What a night, what a show – and there was another unforgettable moment in the Olympic Stadium a little earlier, from an Irish perspective that is, when Olive Loughnane was standing on the old marble steps in front of the Marathon Gate, where in 1936 they set up the Olympic flame, and where last night they handed out the medals for the 20km walk.

Earlier in the afternoon, in the stifling heat out around the Brandenburg Gate, Loughnane became only Ireland’s fifth medal in the history of these championships, the last of which was Gillian O’Sullivan’s silver in the same event, back in 2003.

For Loughnane, the 33-year-old mother of one, it was the culmination of long years of dedication and an increasing belief in her own ability.

On the day it was a stunning performance in both style and execution, and while she was always likely to be second-best to Russia’s World and Olympic champion Olga Kaniskina, the Loughrea native, now living in Cork, always looked sure of a medal from shortly after halfway.

She had a long list of people to thank, starting with her husband, Martin, and their three-year-old daughter, Eimear.

“It’s really my family that keep me going,” she said, “and all the support I get from them. I’m lucky that I was born in Galway, and live in Cork, and have the support of two communities. I’m out training around Coachford and everyone is giving me the thumbs up. These people would still support me if I was last today. I’m so lucky to have them.”

Berlin, being the trend-setter in modern design that it is, decided on rectangular medals, instead of the round ones, but they’re no less valuable, and for Loughnane, silver seemed as good as gold.

In a fitting touch, the medals are inscribed with an image of the Brandenburg Gate, where 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Loughnane has written her own piece of Irish athletics history.