There was a time when Dwain Chambers used to talk about his 'Project Bolt’. How, having outpaced Usain Bolt once or twice when he was invited to train with him in Kingston in 2006, his mission was to beat the great man in a competitive race.After Yohan Blake’s stunning 100m victory over the triple Olympic champion at the Jamaican Olympic trials, the suggestion that he might now want to rename it 'Project Blake’ brought a loud guffaw.“You’ve just got to forget about it,” laughed Chambers, after helping his British team-mates qualify quickest for the 4x100m relay final at the European Championships in Helsinki. “Those guys are on another planet.”That, at least, is the view of Ato Boldon, the four-time Olympic sprint medallist and now an athletics analyst for American broadcaster NBC, who tweeted that the clash in London between the three qualified Jamaicans - Blake, Bolt and Asafa Powell - and Americans Justin Gatlin and Tyson Gay “could be the best race ever”.
Based on the times the main protagonists have been running this year, it is hard to disagree. All five men have run 9.86sec or better and throw in Trinidadian Keston Bledman, who ran exactly the same time in Port of Spain eight days ago, and you have potentially the quickest line-up for an Olympic 100m final in history.
Whether London will witness another world record will depend on the vagaries of the British weather, though reports from athletes competing in the test event in the Olympic Stadium in May suggest that, given a fair wind, the track will be super-fast.
But even if Bolt’s three-year-old mark of 9.58sec remains intact, Blake’s victory at the trials has raised the prospect of a high-octane thriller worthy of the race’s status as the blue riband event of the Olympics.
The result in Kingston was not even close, with Blake establishing clear daylight between himself and the rest of the field as Bolt laboured out of his blocks - a problem that has been all-too-common for him this season.The result should make for an interesting atmosphere inside the Racers Track Club in Kingston as Bolt and Blake are training partners. The pair will clash again in the 200m, having breezed through their heats yesterday.
But Glen Mills, who coaches both men, provided a revealing perspective on Saturday’s result by claiming Blake was in better shape because he had raced only lightly and he predicted Bolt would be stronger by the time of the Olympics.
“We are right where we want to be going into London,” said Mills. “We just want to keep them healthy. We didn’t send Blake to Europe and he is in far better shape than Bolt at this time.
“We have four weeks and we will take it in our stride. We know what to do, so we’ll get there. Bolt is a tough cookie and I think he will survive.”
The world’s most high-profile athlete must hope so. Having lost his world and now his Jamaican title to Blake, he is now in danger of losing his Olympic crown too.
Bolt, who had set the previous quickest time of the year of 9.76sec, had to summon all of his powers just to take second place in 9.86sec, with Powell taking the all-important third spot to seal his Olympic selection in 9.88sec.You can say that again. If anyone was having regrets at paying £725 for a top-price ticket to the men’s Olympic 100m final in London - and there have been plenty of moans about the position of the top-category seats now that tickets have started arriving on doorsteps - then the events in Kingston in Saturday’s small hours will offer reassurance that it was a price well worth paying. The hottest ticket in town this summer just got even hotter.
Bolt’s world record-breaking 100m victory in Beijing four years ago is hailed as one of the greatest moments in Olympic history, yet it was essentially a one-man show, an exhibition of almost superhuman athleticism but not a competitive event.
The emergence of Blake, who not only defeated Bolt at the trials but did so in a winning time of 9.75sec that is the fastest in the world this year, means the London Olympics now has a genuine race on its hands. And quite possibly the greatest 100m race there has ever been.
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