Considering the 100m

Edward Ovadia

Email: edwardovadia [at] gmail.com

We are in the process of a 100m revolution. Don't believe me? Let me hit you with some stats.

Eleven of the top thirteen 100m times are set by a certain two Jamaicans, Asafa Powell and Usain Bolt. Powell lays claim to seven of the ten. Of these thirteen ever performances under 9.80 seconds, seven have been set this year; and all but one of the thirteen have been set in the last three years.

It used to be that the world record would inch along one hundredth of a second at a time, making occasional improvements once a year if we were lucky. Now, every time Powell, Bolt or Gay step onto the track, we expect at least a sub 9.90; a time which five years ago would have been considered exceptional.

So why have we progressed so far in the last few years?

In some lights, it's surprising that we've progressed at all from times recorded during the drug fuelled 1980s (and 1990s?). When Ben Johnson recorded his short lived 1988 Olympic win, no one thought his 9.79 would be equalled for a long time, if ever. And he's the most infamous doper ever. Yet now, 9.79 seems almost pedestrian. We've seen 9.69, and the talk has moved to low 9.50s. Ben Johnson and his 9.79, in all its drug fuelled glory, has been left behind.

Having said all that, I hope we've moved on from the drug era - I think we have - but we'll never know.

Tyson Gay has signed up for the US initiative of 'Program Believe', where he is tested enough to form a baseline level of all the standard readings. So if he ever shows any deviation from that known level, the alarm bells go off. It makes it almost impossible to cheat. And he's covered 100m faster than any man or woman ever has, drugs or no drugs.

Or, take Usain Bolt - the new hero of global athletics. (And rightly so!) Carl Lewis, Victor Conte, and an army of others are critical of Bolt and the Jamaican success in Beijing. And they have their reasons - the margin of his success, the questionable testing program in Jamaica in past years (the claim that there was no Jamaican drug testing body before this year has been bandied around rather frequently).

(Consider for a moment what it would do to the sport if Bolt was found to be doping? He has captured the imagination of so many people, and brought in sporting fans who would otherwise have never payed any attention to athletics otherwise. Discovering Bolt on drugs would be the final blow to a sport whose reputation is already tarnished in the popular mind, perhaps beyond repair.)

But in my mind Bolt is clean. Sure, this might be a fantasy; but like Lewis, I also have my reasons. The smoothness, grace and litheness of Bolt's action belies drug use. He lacks the stiffness, musclebound action of someone on drugs. His advantage must come from his height and stride length, and a superior neuromuscular system which allows him to use his long legs and stride efficiently and with coordination and speed, while generating enough power to success over the shorter sprints.

But what will people think if Powell, Bolt and Gay come out next season and run several 9.59s apiece, culminating in a 9.51 at the Berlin World Championships? They'll have left the known drug cheaters 0.3 seconds (around four metres!) behind in less than 20 years. And while we may think, and hope, they've done it cleanly; while they may *know* they've done it in good conscience; will the public and media ever accept them running that fast?

If they run slowly, no one wants to know them. If they run fast and succeed, they're labelled cheats. Can the stars of track ever really win?