Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt has helped set up what should be one of the most eagerly-awaited sprint duels in decades at the World Athletics Championships in Berlin next month.
Bolt, who won gold in the 100m, 200m and 4x100m relay in record times at the Beijing Olympics, will come up against arch-rival Tyson Gay, the American who won gold in the same three events in the last World Championship in Osaka in 2007.
Major injury scares between now and the August worlds in the German capital aside, organisers could not have asked for a better-scripted showdown. Gay, who failed to sparkle at the Olympics partly because of a nagging pre-competition injury, has set the fastest times over both the 100 and 200m this season so far, timing 9.77 and 19.58sec in warm, sunny conditions in Rome last week and New York in May.
Bolt posted 19.59sec for the 200m in Lausanne earlier this month and at Friday’s Golden League meeting in Paris clocked 9.79sec over the shorter distance. Both races took place in cold, rainy conditions.
On Friday, Bolt would surely have bettered Gay’s season-best over 100m had it not been for his leaden-footed start. The 22-year-old was second out of the blocks in the eight-strong field and did not fully get into his loping stride until 40 metres into the race. By the time he reached the halfway mark, he was in a position to turn on the power and leave his rivals for dead.
“In these conditions the time is great. But it was hard to put everything in place from start to finish,” admitted Bolt. Bolt, who was warmly welcomed by a public completely won over by his pre-race show-boating, admitted that he had plenty of work to do on his poor start. “My reaction is poor, this is something I have to work on in the next weeks before Berlin,” he said, adding that he felt he was running at 85 percent of his capacity.
“It was just a bad start — the execution into the drive-through wasn’t good. I didn’t do so well in the first 30 metres. But overall it’s a good time, I’m happy with it. But its life, things don’t ever happen the way you want.”
Things weren’t all wrong, however, with the tall Jamaican insisting: “I had a good feeling on the track - I thought I was flying.”
Bolt will next run in the 200 metres at Crystal Palace in London on July 25, when he will come up against Gay in what should realistically be the two sprinters’ last outing before Berlin.”
