At 10.30pm on Saturday, with the temperature dropping slightly and the
flag-waving of 91,000 people halted for a moment, eight men will take to
their starting blocks for the most important race of these 29th Olympic
Games. Eight-thousand miles away, should Prisoner 84868054 be allowed a
television set in her Texas cell, you would hope that she would be squirming
with embarrassment. Marion Jones once dominated the 100m at the Olympic
Games, even above the men, and now she might see how it is done properly.
Of those eight men, a quirk of fate has brought together the three quickest in
history for their first meeting: Tyson Gay, the world champion; Asafa
Powell, the former world record-holder; and Usain Bolt, the fastest man of
them all.
“I am more excited about this Olympic final than when I was competing,” says
Donovan Bailey, the Jamaican-born Canadian who won 100m gold in Atlanta in
1996. He triumphed in 9.84sec, the last occasion the world record was broken
in an Olympic final.
Stand by for a rewriting of the record books. It is likely a Jamaican will
become Bailey’s latest successor. In the space of three months, the tall,
imposing figure of Bolt has brought a fresh wave of optimism to an event,
let alone a sport, in the doldrums. An athlete who has progressed from
spectacular junior to a senior, making gradual inroads at his chosen
distance, the 200m, has suddenly found that he is pretty nifty at the 100m,
too. Never mind a bolt from the blue, this summer the 6ft 5in star has
changed the perception of the two men who were most likely to challenge for
Olympic gold before his emergence.
On a rainy night in New York at the end of May, Gay, who was 26 yesterday,
finished second as Bolt, 21, broke Powell’s 100m world record of 9.74sec
with a run of 9.72sec.
Powell, 25, says it has helped him because he no longer has the pressure of
being favourite as he chases his first global title, while Gay ran a
wind-assisted 9.68sec – illegal for record purposes – at the US trials to
show he cannot be forgotten.
As for what Bolt thinks? “I am laid-back and I just take it all in my stride,”
he says.
What these three know is that the reputation of the 100m is on the line once
more, and its biggest audience is watching the responsibility they are
carrying in less than 10 seconds. As Powell says: “It upsets me when
athletes go the other way, the wrong way, because there are athletes out
there who compete with their natural ability, but when people say that
athletes who run fast are on drugs, it is something you have to live with.”
When America’s Jim Hines became the first man to run under 10 seconds with
electronic timing when he took the Olympic title in Mexico 40 years ago,
nobody could have imagined what lay ahead. Twenty years later, Ben Johnson
brought a disgrace to sprinting that has never really gone away as he won
Olympic gold in Seoul and then tested positive for steroids.
Since Johnson, Bailey is the only Olympic 100m champion who has not been
linked with drugs or tested positive, and that is why he remains a respected
voice. “If you get up every day and you set yourself goals, and that is the
limit that your body is going to take you to, then you can be satisfied with
it,” he says.
Just how satisfied Bolt is with his 100m record was easy to understand as he
sat reminiscing about his youth, when Caribbean cricket was occupying his
sporting mind before he chose to become an athlete. He had not been
sufficiently interested in athletics to properly watch the 1996 Olympics in
Atlanta, and only saw the 200m final in which Michael Johnson broke the
world record in 19.32sec more recently on YouTube.
“It's amazing,” says Bolt. “It’s an ambition of mine to run that fast over
200m, but I don’t know if it will happen. Michael is the greatest that there
has ever been. I have put in so much technical work on the 200m over the
years that it has become part of me.”
As he continues to explain his devotion to a distance where he made his name
as a record-breaking world junior champion in 2002, he laughs. He knows the
reason. We are in the company of the quickest man to run the 100m, and he
has not even talked about it. It is a raw and innocent dismissal of the
blue-riband event of the Olympics, but it is typical Bolt. On occasions, the
100m does not really seem to be on his radar; it is why he has become so
dangerous at it.
The story begins on the first Saturday of May this year. His father,
Wellesley, is driving him from the family home in Kingston to that evening's
grand prix meeting at the national stadium and naturally they are chatting.
“Why would we have spoken about the 100m world record?” asks Bolt. He was
there to run the distance to test the speed and power in his mammoth legs
early in an athletics summer for his main ambition: to win the 200m at the
Olympic Games in Beijing.
He had raced over 100m only twice before. He had a personal best of 10.03sec
and was never thought of as a player. By the end of the evening, world
sprinting had been forced to sit up and take notice. Bolt had climbed
awkwardly out of his blocks but picked up speed because of his incredible
height to win in 9.76sec. It was the third-best time in history and, four
weeks later, he had run the fastest ever.
While his coach Glen Mills deliberated whether Bolt would double up here at
the Olympics, it was always going to happen. He is the favourite, but
because he runs the race technically so poorly, nobody can predict how fast
he can go. His coach will not tell where he goes wrong. “He likes to keep me
on edge,” says Bolt. “He will give me hints during training, maybe about the
way I position myself at the start or enter the drive phase, but he will not
tell me exactly.”
“One thing is for sure – the Olympic record will go,” says Bailey. “But what
you have to remember is that while Usain is the fastest among them, it is
also him who has the most improvement to make. The guy is 6ft 5in, he ran
9.72sec with a mediocre start, a very good acceleration in the middle and he
was shutting it down at the end. He can eclipse that mark by getting
stronger and a little more technically sound. If he is as technically sound
as Asafa or Tyson, he will be a man among boys.”
Bailey believes that the outcome will be decided after about three seconds.
“The race will be won at 30m,” he says. “Asafa and Tyson cannot make a
mistake in the first 30, Usain can. Tyson is war-tested and has won, Asafa
is war-tested and has not, but he has no pressure at these games. Usain is
bigger and he clearly possesses the most speed.”
Do not expect Bolt’s rivals to express any worries, though. “I haven’t had
anxiety about the whole Olympics because I’ve been in rehab, so I think it’s
really helped mentally,” says Gay, who has been battling back after a
hamstring injury forced him to pull up in the 200m at the US trials.
Powell says: “I am happier being the underdog. Tyson has beaten me only once
in his life and I have beaten him over 100 times, but he won when it
mattered (at the world championships in Osaka). People are making it seem
that Asafa is dead. People are making it seem like Asafa can’t run fast.
Well, I can run faster than before.”
It might be fast enough to win gold, and it might not. With Bolt around, it
might be enough only for silver, but it will be something that cannot be
missed. Let’s hope that prisoner 84868054, who was sentenced for lying about
her use of performance-enhancing drugs, is put to shame on the big night.
Wy this could be the year the world record falls again
NEW KID ON THE BLOCKS
Usain Bolt set the standard with his phenomenal 9.72sec world record in New
York in May. Bolt only decided this year to run the distance as a way of
finding extra speed for what he insists is his main event, the 200m. He has
raced only seven times in major 100m races and is still searching for the
perfect race, despite clocking this amazing time. His coach, Glen Mills,
does not tell him where he goes wrong, but just gives hints during training.
THE RIVALS
Asafa Powell has so much to prove that he could produce something spectacular.
He was fifth at the last Olympics behind Justin Gatlin, but more
significantly he was third behind Tyson Gay at last summer’s world
championships in Osaka. He has never won a major global title and it is a
record that he is determined to put right. Although Gay will be coming back
from injury, his form in the US trials in June was outstanding. He ran
9.77sec in the quarter-finals and then, in the final, completed a
wind-assisted 9.68sec run, the fastest ever 100m under any conditions.
THE CONDITIONS
By 10.30pm local time on Saturday evening – the time that the 100m final
is due to get under way – the conditions in Beijing will be as good as
they can be for the sprinters. The temperature, though still warm, is likely
to be tempered by a cool breeze and there should be little moisture on a
hard, quick track, which will be ideal for fast times.
THE TECHNOLOGY
For Nike, Powell will be wearing the Aerofly gold shoe, which, at 92g, is the
lightest running shoe the company has ever produced. Gay will use adidas’
Trinity spike, the upper of which was inspired by the spikes made by Adi
Dassler in 1936 for Jesse Owens. Difficult though it may be for the man in
the street to believe, Nike also claim that the socks and arm coverings of
its suits can break up drag by 15%.
HISTORY
Forty years ago in Mexico, Jim Hines ran 9.95sec to smash the world record and
20 years later it happened again in Seoul. Canadian Ben Johnson ran 9.79sec
but was kicked out of the Games and the gold went to Carl Lewis, whose time
of 9.92sec in crossing the line second became the new world record.
The Olympic finals that smashed the speed barrier
HINES BREAKS 10 SECONDS
American Jim Hines had already run a sub-10sec 100m time in the 1968 US
national championships, but it was recorded under manual timing and he was
officially ‘reclocked’ at 10.03sec. When he came to Mexico a few months
later, there was no doubt. With the 100m Olympic final timed electronically,
he became the first man to break the 10sec barrier for the event, coming in
at 9.95sec, and he would also claim a sprint relay gold. The race was the
first all-black men’s 100m final at the Games.
THE MOST INFAMOUS RACE OF ALL
Ben Johnson had broken the world record at the 1987 world championships and
renewed a bitter rivalry with Carl Lewis in Seoul a year later. As had
happened 12 months before, the Canadian got the better of Lewis in the
Olympic final, clocking a new best of 9.79sec. Within a few days, news of
Johnson’s failed drugs test emerged. He was disqualified and Lewis was
awarded the gold and took the world record in his place. Over the following
years, four of the first five that day were tainted by association with
performance-enhancing substances. In addition to Johnson, these were Lewis,
who failed three tests at the 1988 US trials but successfully pleaded that
he had innocently taken a herbal supplement, Britain’s Linford Christie, who
had been awarded the silver and received a two-year ban in 1999 after
testing positive for nandrolone, and Dennis Mitchell.
DONOVAN’S DAY
After Linford Christie had been disqualified for false starts, the 1996
Olympic final in Atlanta finally got under way, with Canadian and world
champion Donovan Bailey holding off the challenge of Frankie Fredericks and
Ato Boldon, to claim gold. The clock then revealed that Bailey had beaten
Leroy Burrell’s world record of two years, 9.85sec, by a hundredth of a
second. With this run, many Canadians felt that the ghost of the disgraced
Johnson in 1988 had finally been exorcised. Bailey’s record would stand for
three years.
