My abiding memory from these Games  will be watching Usain Bolt give everything he had to break a world record most of us had thought unbreakable.

Michael Johnson’s time of 19.32 in the 200 metres had never been seriously challenged before the Jamaican sprinter, a headline writer’s dream, decided it was finally time to get down to some serious work.

Bolt had won the 100 metres, and broken the world record, with ridiculous ease on the Saturday to set the Games alight. He was running so well that he had time to ease up well before the line and still record a commanding win.

Wednesday was different. Again, he had the race won well before the line, thanks to a brilliant bend, but there was no question of him slacking off as he hurtled down the straight. I could see him grimacing with pain as he neared the finish line before looking over to check the time.

The clock stopped on 19.31 but times are often rounded up or rounded down and there was a second or two to wait before we would find out whether he had broken Johnson’s world record or merely equalled it.

Those seconds seemed a long time for me — heaven knows what Bolt must have been feeling — but eventually the time was rounded down to 19.30. It was an incredible achievement for the Jamaican and a memory I will treasure.

This is the seventh and last in our series of Beijing snapshots — moments from the Games that will live long in the memories of all who witnessed them.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt in the 100m, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 6: Michael Phelps, by Derek Parr here.

PHOTO: Usain Bolt of Jamaica looks up at the scoreboard as he crosses the finish line to win men’s 200m final of the athletics competition in the National Stadium at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 20, 2008. Bolt set a new world record with a timing of 19.30 seconds. REUTERS/David Gray

Michael Phelps trouncing his rivals is always something fantastic to see, and here in Beijing it took your breath away to watch him so often leave everyone else for dead.

But the races which stick most vividly in my mind are the two in which gold appeared to have escaped him.

First of those was the 4×100 freestyle relay. I thought the race was lost for the U.S. when Frenchman Alain Bernard turned for the last length nearly a second up. But Jason Lezak had other ideas and snatched victory with the swim of a lifetime. I’ll never forget the sight of Phelps roaring his joy and release.

Then there was Miroslav Cavic reaching for gold in the 100 fly, only for Phelps, charging through the faster, to swing his arms over, hit the wall first in that final lunge and win by just one hundredth of a second. I’d expected Phelps to catch him earlier but thought, at the death, he’d run out of time to do it.

The next day Phelps made it eight in the medley relay and I had been lucky enough to witness each movement of his swimming symphony.

Swimming is my sporting passion. I’d been in Munich for my first Olympics in 1972 but was covering gymnastics and couldn’t get to the pool nearby to see any of Mark Spitz’s seven golden swims. Thirty-six years on, it was all the sweeter to watch Phelps take his place as arguably the greatest Olympian of them all.

I may have missed the seven but I got the eight.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the sixth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: Matthew Mitcham, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 5: Fair play gets forgotten, by Lindsay Beck here.

One more to come.

PHOTO: Michael Phelps of the U.S. competes during his team’s victory in the men’s 4×100 meters medley relay swimming final during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games at the National Aquatics Centre, August 17, 2008. REUTERS/David Gray

It was everything the event was not supposed to be. The Olympics should embody sportsmanship and fair play. Taekwondo is about discipline and civility in a fight.

Unfortunately Cuba’s Angel Vaoldia Matos forgot about both in the heat of his bronze medal bout.

Matos was leading 3-2 against Kazakhstan’s Arman Chilmanov when he slumped to the floor rubbing his leg. When he was disqualified for exceeding a minute’s injury time, his coach rushed on to the mat and Matos exploded in anger, reacting to the referee’s call by clocking him with a well-aimed kick to the head.

The discipline of the taekwondo mat descended into chaos as both Matos and coach stormed out, with the head of the World Taekwondo Federation in hot pursuit.

The sport’s governing body reacted swiftly and strongly. Both were banned for life from the sport for what the federation said was behaviour that strongly violated “the spirit of taekwondo and the Olympic Games.”

Matos’s bouts in Beijing were struck from the Olympic record. Order was restored.

Kevin Fylan adds: This is the fifth in our series of snapshots from the Beijing Games, where Reuters reporters give their thoughts on what it was like to be there at the key moments of the Olympics.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 2: Matthias Steiner, by Sophie Hardach here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 3: Usain Bolt, by Paul Majendie here.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 4: The greatest dive in Olympic history, by Emma Graham-Harrison here.

More to follow over the course of the day.

PHOTO: Angel Valodia Matos of Cuba kicks referee Chakir Chelbat of Sweden during his men’s +80kg bronze medal taekwondo bout against Arman Chilmanov of Kazakhstan at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 23, 2008. REUTERS/Issei Kato

Continuing our look at the golden moments from the Games, Sophie Hardach tells us what it was like watching the heart-wrenching story of weightlifter Matthias Steiner unfold.

Sophie writes:

After covering 14 Olympic weightlifting competitions, I sat down for the super-heavyweight contest knowing that it would be the most spectacular of them all. In the previous contests, I had seen hulking strongmen in tears, had watched lifters crash to the floor under the barbell, had heard caveman howls and primal screams.

Now all that macho breast-beating would reach a climax, with 150kg-contenders trying to snatch more than 200kg. What I did not expect to see in that testosterone-filled competition hall was a moment of heart-breaking tenderness.

I had heard the story of 25-year-old German lifter Matthias Steiner, whose wife, Susann, died after a car crash last year, and my heart went out to him as I watched him fail not just one but two attempts.

I had read that he carried a photo of Susann with him at every competition, and had promised her in hospital that he would make their joint Olympic dream come true. But after the snatch and another failed attempt in the clean and jerk, it looked as if he would not even win a medal.

I wrote up a short story just in case, thinking that his moving story might interest my editors even if he ended up fourth or fifth. Then I gave the editing desk a heads-up on the likely ranking: Russian Evgeny Chigishev gold, Latvian Viktors Scerbatihs silver … and maybe, just maybe, bronze for my own country, Germany.

Suddenly, Steiner raised his weight by 10kg. Weightlifters usually move up in steps of 2kg, sometimes 4kg or 6kg. After two failed attempts, this looked like a desperate lunge for a medal by a man who was clearly unable to lift the targeted weight. I was sure he would fail, and yet, as he lifted the barbell, I found myself forgetting my journalistic impartiality, thinking only: come on, you can do it, pleeease…

He did it. Groaning and yelling, he lifted 258kg, his personal best. “Matthias Steiner gold, Chigishev silver, Scerbatihs bronze,” I shouted into my phone. I then hugged the bewildered Reuters colleague next to me before furiously typing up the story.

I only looked up again when the German anthem played. Steiner was standing on the podium, a bear of a man choking back the tears, clutching a bouquet and his medal. Then someone handed him another object.

He held it up and kissed it, a look of incredible pain mixed with happiness on his face. I gasped when I recognised what it was — a photo of a young, pretty blonde with a carefree smile. Susann.

Read Snapshot Beijing, 1: Matt Emmons, by Erik Kirschbaum here.

More to follow over the course of the day.

PHOTO: Matthias Steiner of Germany holds a photo of his late wife Susann as he poses with his gold medal in the men’s +105kg Group A weightlifting competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 19, 2008. REUTERS/Alvin Chan   

So much goes on in such a short space of time at the Olympics that for many of us it all tends to blur into one. You’re lucky if you can come away from the Games with one indelible image in your mind, a moment you’ll always remember for the drama, the colour or the sheer brilliance of the performance.

We’re almost at the end now, so I’ve asked Reuters correspondents to share a favourite golden moment from the Games. Here’s the first from Erik Kirschbaum, who watched aghast as history repeated itself at the shooting. Erik writes:

As Yogi Berra might have said, it was deja vu all over again.
 
American Matt Emmons had just thrown away another gold medal on his last shot — just like he did four years ago in Athens when I was also watching from about 15 metres back. I bet Emmons will be remembered in 100 years for the unique feat. It was, for me, hands down the most incredible moment of the Beijing Olympics.
 
I spent 3 hours last Sunday watching Emmons, an unbelievably friendly accountant from New Jersey, build up a huge 3.3-point lead in the 3-positions shooting competition.

He made that marathon event famous four years ago by firing at the wrong target on the very last of his 130 shots and throwing away a 3-point lead and a sure gold medal.

In Beijing, Emmons seemed to be on a mission to make up for that wastefulness — even though he could laugh about it then and now. He did, after all, meet his wife thanks to that blunder in Athens.

Emmons was shooting brilliantly on that Sunday, hitting 10s on 7 of his first 9 shots in the 10-shot final and opening up a vast lead in a sport usually decided by fractions of a point.

I had my alert headline all set up on my computer screen, “American Matt Emmons wins Olympic gold medal in men’s 3-position shooting” and was about to pull the trigger when suddenly the score of 4.4 flashed on the screen above his head — and the crowd gasped.  

No, I thought. Can’t be true. He didn’t just blow it again, did he? An instant later I realised he had done just that. I still can’t really believe it.

I’ll be sending more of these, in no particular order, over the last two days of the Games.

PHOTO: Matthew Emmons of the U.S. reacts after shooting during the men’s 50m rifle 3 positions competition at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games August 17, 2008. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke