Not content with being the fastest man on the planet, Usain Bolt, the Jamaican who is the stand-out personality of these Games, took the Olympics into a whole new world yesterday.

A gifted few have claimed the sprint double of 100m and 200m, but never has anyone done so in two world record times – until now.

Bolt marked his achievement with his hallmark hip-swivelling dance and the news that he is fuelled by chicken nuggets.

The 200m record, set 12 years ago by the imperious American, Michael Johnson, was thought by many to be untouchable. Bolt’s performance was astonishing. His time of 19.30 seconds beat Johnson’s by two-hundredths of a second. And, unlike almost every other race he has ever run, he went flat out from gun to tape.

Bolt has fast become known here as an entertainer, both for his speed and the manner of his celebration. He followed his win by dancing on the track, admiring himself in the big-screen replay and saying: “I am cool. That guy is fast.”

He also revealed that after his coach found out that his lightning 100m had been fuelled by two full helpings of chicken nuggets he had been limited to a mere two nuggets when he warmed up yesterday. As he completed his lap of honour, the sound system played Happy Birthday to mark his turning 22 today.

As if that good news did not suffice, it seems that he has also passed the other big test, at doping control.

Bolt became yesterday the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984 to become sprint champion at both 100m and 200m. In Lewis’s day, though, it was possible to shock the Olympic world with world-record-breaking athleticism without setting in motion a rumour mill as to what illegal means may have been used. “I feel good,” Bolt said. “I have just proved to the world I am a true champion.”

How the world hopes so. The doping news from Beijing yesterday was that Lyudmila Blonska, the Ukrainian who won silver in the heptathlon, had failed a drug test and proceedings have begun that will almost certainly lead to her being stripped of the medal. As the heptathlon finished on Saturday, the same evening as the 100m, Blonska will have given her sample on the same evening as Bolt, so we can surmise that Bolt’s urine was clean.

But for some of his predecessors a clean sample did not tell the whole story. Marion Jones, who was the world’s leading female sprinter from 1997 to 2002, gave 160 urine samples, never tested positively and was rumbled only by a federal investigation.

So when the International Olympic Committee announces, as it did yesterday, that 4,133 tests have so far been conducted at this Games, it means only that a huge military operation has been under way and that a deterrent is in place. But the fact that Blonska is only the fifth athlete to test positively does not mean that we have a clean Games; it means that Blonska et al have been exceedingly badly advised by their chemists.

However, Juan Manuel Alonso, the chairman of the antidoping commission at the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), said yesterday: “We are winning more battles than the enemy. We have to recognise that they are still ahead, but we are closer than ever.”

For his evidence, Mr Alonso could point to the brilliant sting operation that was carried out over a period of 18 months, and three weeks ago finally delivered evidence against a seven-strong group of Russian female athletes. He could also point to other groups rumbled this year: 11 Bulgarian weightlifters, 11 Greek weightlifters and seven Russian rowers.

The drug busts of the Russian athletes also showed that new techniques by antidoping agencies are beginning to work. Mr Alonso’s 11-man team is the biggest department in the IAAF and, having studied the behaviour of the seven Russians, they started to suspect that they were somehow providing clean samples of urine that was not theirs.

The IAAF started to store their urine samples and, over that 18-month period, with the use of DNA testing, was able to prove that the Russian seven had been providing urine that belonged to other people. The Russian sting showed how antidoping agencies are starting to behave more like detectives and are pursuing suspect athletes. The smartest cheats no longer take drugs at big events, such as the Olympics, but when they are not competing. Antidoping agencies, in response, are now increasingly doing their work by arriving unannounced to test athletes at their homes or in training.

To stay ahead of the game, the smarter cheats began to take “micro-doses” of performance-enhancing drugs, particularly in the days after the testers had visited. In response, the IAAF’s testers have been going back to the same athlete three days in a row. One target group were the Spanish cyclists who were tested eight times within a week of arriving in Beijing. Sure enough, one of the five positives here was Isabel Moreno, the Spanish cyclist.

So that is the good news. The bad news is that there is not a single insider who believes that the ratio of five positives from 4,133 tests is an accurate reflection of the quota of Olympic cheats. In Beijing, the unprecedented success of the Jamaican track and field team has come to general attention. The IAAF accordingly produced the following statistics: there are 22 elite Jamaicans and they have been tested out of competition, on average, two or three times since January 1. Bolt has been tested four times out of competition, three times in competition and six times since he arrived in Beijing.

These statistics show that a war on drugs is being seriously waged. Whether it is being won is another matter.