Campbell-Brown seals Jamaican sweep

BEIJING (Reuters) - Veronica Campbell-Brown scorched to victory in the Olympic 200 meters final on Thursday to retain her title and complete a Jamaican sweep of all four individual sprint gold medals at the Games.

The 26-year-old exploded out of the blocks, increased her lead around the bend and clocked a career-best 21.74 seconds to beat American Allyson Felix into second place for the second successive Olympics.

The world 100m champion, who was denied the chance of a sprint double in Beijing when she failed to make the Jamaican team for the shorter sprint, raced home a meter clear and raised her arms into the damp night air in celebration.

"Indeed, I'm very happy. It's great to come out and defend my title," she told reporters, adding that the Jamaican title sweep was also "great".

"Fear is not something I bring to the track."

Felix, who has won the world title twice since the Athens Olympics four years ago, held off another Jamaican, Kerron Stewart, with a late surge to win silver in 21.93.

"Deja vu. Not in a good way," she said. "The start was terrible, the end was not that great. I still feel blessed. I feel ungrateful to say I was disappointed with this medal when so many people don't have the opportunity."

Stewart crossed the line in 22.0 to claim bronze and win her second medal of the Games after finishing joint second in the 100m.

"We've shown again that Jamaica is the sprinting country," said Stewart. "We had and we have so many sprinters in Jamaica, it's crazy. We're taking over every event bit by bit."

American Muna Lee missed out on a medal by just one hundredth of second, finishing fourth ahead of compatriot Marshevet Hooker and the other silver medalist in the 100m, Jamaican Sherone Simpson.

Usain Bolt, who received his second gold medal straight after Campbell-Brown's victory, completed the men's sprint double on Wednesday and Shelly-Ann Fraser led Stewart and Simpson home in a Jamaican sweep of the women's 100m.

The Americans, the last nation to take all the individual sprint titles after Canadian Ben Johnson's disqualification for doping in 1988, failed to win a men or women's sprint title for the first time since they boycotted the 1980 Moscow Games.

"One of the things I hope the United States takes out of this is respectability for track and field," said Felix's coach Bob Kersee.

"I don't think we have it as much as we had in the past, and I think Jamaica loves track and field. Jamaica track and field is huge."

(Additional reporting by Liu Zhen, Catherine Bremer and Gene Cherry; Editing by Ed Osmond)