Track: Egos on line as fastest face off

By PETER JESSUP

The race to find the world's fastest man in Sydney may provide the closest finish at an Olympics.

Only 19 men have run under the magical 10-second mark. Eight of them will be trying to earn one of the eight lanes for the final of the 100 metres.

Likely starters are the current world record-holder Maurice Greene, whose 9.79s robbed Ben Johnson of his tainted claim to fame as fastest ever, drugs or not; Olympic champion Donovan Bailey whose 9.84s record Greene broke, Bailey's 9.88s the fifth-best this year; Commonwealth Games champ Ato Boldon with 9.88s; Obadele Thompson from Barbados, PB 9.87s; Bruny Surin from Canada, second at the world champs in Seville last year and Nigerian Francis Obikwelu, third; Darren Campbell from Britain and American Tim Montgomery.

There's a slim chance of a white boy from Down Under standing out in what will otherwise be all-black field. Aussie Matt Shirvington, at 22, will easily be the youngest in this game where the power that comes with physical maturity is all-important and experience counts. He ran 10.03 at the Kuala Lumpur Commonwealth Games final and is billed as likely to be the first white man under 10 seconds (Pole Marian Worodin ran 10 flat in 1984, but no other Caucasian has bettered it). Shirvington owns the personalised plate "Sub 10," ready for his car once he's done it.

The winner will be black. And judging from past performances at the Olympics, which sprinters regard ahead of world championships, a lowering of Greene's record is likely. Jesse Owen's winning time in Berlin in 1936 was 10.3s; Carl Lewis ran 9.99 at Los Angeles; at Barcelona Linford Christie was the only runner under 10s with his 9.96; Bailey ran 9.84s at Atlanta in a field with four runners under 10s; Greene's world record is 9.79s, the same time drug-powered Ben Johnson ran in Seoul.

Greene is a good candidate for both gold and hype champ. Age 25, the Kansas City Cannonball runs in red-and-yellow spikes that stand out as they flash in the face of other competitors, his nickname "Mo" factory imprinted by sponsors. Across his chest is the slogan "Pheno-Mo-non." His number plate is "MO GOLD." Greene flunked school, judged so academically challenged that he couldn't even snake into one of those "educational scholarships" US colleges hand out. He was a movie ticket seller, burger cook, greyhound exerciser and hardware storeman before his speed elevated him to fulltime track work. "That just made me a stronger person," he says.

Ernest, one of Maurice's three brothers, took him to the track. Ernest has run 10.24s.

Now Greene gets $100,000 appearance money, a retainer and a speed bonus for winning and breaking records from sponsor Nike. "The job ads were flushed," he said, after he won the US champs at Indianapolis in 1997 in 9.96s. He joined then-fastest female Inge Miller and Trinidadian Ato Boldon under coach John Smith, a 1972 Olympic 400m runner, at his team Hudson Speed International.

Work in the Granada Hills, north Los Angeles, starts with Greene routinely telling everyone, "Thank God we're not behind a desk, we're out here doing what we love."

He has run under the magical 10s 24 times in his career, won the 100/200m double at the Seville world champs last year and also won gold in the 4 x 100m relay team to be the first athlete to take three golds in one world champs.

It is one of those curious sporting coincidences that Greene's world record equals Ben Johnson's Seoul run. "He got penalised for it, so as far as I'm concerned there is no Ben Johnson," Greene said. "I ran it, I'm clean, and if you really want to compare times, he ran with a tailwind of 1.3 metres per second and mine was 0.3m/s."

Greene smiles, win or lose. Fans reckon that's amiable confidence; competitors reckon it's arrogant in-your-face self-satisfaction.

The brash Ato Boldon could be a good bet for the slagging double. "Maurice has never beaten me over 200m," Boldon said, "and I don't think he ever will."

Though he won't say the same of the 100m, he talks of having a 747 named after him as countryman Hasley Crawford did when he was world's fastest man after the 1976 Montreal games. Boldon runs with a lightning flash across his chest.

A BBC commentator got offside with Greene after he predicted Michael Johnson would beat him in the 200m. His take on reigning Olympic champ Bailey: "He hasn't won anything since the Olympics ... he's running 10.3 now."

Bailey had a long injury-enforced break from the world stage. He snapped the Achilles tendon in his left ankle in September 1998 while warming up to play basketball. But a 9.98s run, fifth-fastest this year, has him firmly back in the golden frame.

Bailey has had it easy compared to some of the others. Jamaican-born, his parents moved to Canada when he was a child and he enjoyed a middle-class upbringing. By age 21 he was a successful stockbroker, driving a white Porsche.

Now, aged 32, he believes he's better mentally. "I started taking things too seriously, taking running literally as a job - I must train, I must break the record, I must, I must, I must. The track wasn't fun anymore. Then I got hurt and the motivation, for me, became to get back to where I was having fun.

"This year, after all that stuff, I'm still here, I'm still reigning Olympic champion, I'm older and things are good. I'm not at the track because I want money or fame. I've got every title that's available so I'm just here having a good old time."

He doesn't rate anyone else as being in the race.

"What I do is prepare every day to win at the Olympics. If it takes a world record to win, that's what I have to do."

You have to go back to Helsinki 1952 and Melbourne 1956 to get a field that all finished within a two-tenths of a second split. That seems more than likely in Sydney.

Nike has offered aerodynamically efficient body-tight suits to all its sponsored runners. The products, though, are so new the degree of advantage remains unproven.

Drag has a direct relationship to velocity and size, a sprinter using an estimated 14 per cent of his energy to overcome air resistance. There is thought that the super-tight material that helps the athlete uncoil for a fast start may become a restriction as he winds up down the straight.

Sprinters go better when well warmed-up and perspiring. The suits for Sydney are dark to attract sunlight. Ground-level wind tests in Stadium Australia have determined what fabric types and skin surfaces work best.

It seems only a matter of time before the skins are designed to cater for conditions at specific venues. And all this for just under 10 seconds.