BEIJING -– Eleven years ago, at the world track and field championships in Athens, British sports journalist David Walsh asked me if I were writing about doping in every story.

Walsh's fixation on the subject was unusual among journalists only in its relentlessness. He later would become Lance Armstrong's nemesis, presenting evidence in two books that strongly suggested if did not prove the seven-time Tour de France champion was a doper.

My answer to David back then was the same as it would be now, after Jamaica's Usain Bolt defied credulity with Saturday's world-record run while winning the Olympic 100 meters.

I have suspicions every time someone does something remarkable in track and field, but I do not mention it every time out of what may be a wrongheaded occasional devotion to the idea of innocent until proven guilty.

I brought up the subject in print after Bolt set a world record of 9.72 at a May 31 meet in New York. It seemed hard to believe that someone who had run the 100 meters only five times at that point could already have been so fast.

I did not include it in my story after Bolt lowered the world record in Saturday's final to 9.69, a time that might have been ridiculously faster had the Jamaican 21-year-old not hammed it up in the final 20 meters of a race he won with ease.

Too much ease to run that fast, many would say, especially in a sport where three of the past six Olympic 100 champions have tested positive at some time in their careers, and a fourth has been implicated in doping by a witness in the Trevor Graham trial.

As a journalist, this is one of those damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't situations.

I was among the hundreds of writers who made Marion Jones the focus of pre-Olympic coverage in 2000, even if I began to have doubts about her remarkable performances when she returned to track and field full-time in 1997.

Was it wrong to build her up before Sydney? No more than the hyberbolic, see-no-evil coverage by the baseball media of the home-run chase by Mark McGwire, who admitted taking a steroid not banned by the sport. No more than the breathless coverage of college and pro football day after day, even if any rational person would wonder how its behemoths built their bodies.

Not long after Michael Johnson obliterated the world record in the 200 meters at the 1996 Olympics, I wrote about how sad it seemed that the immediate reaction among media had to be, "How?'' rather than "wow!''

Did my latest Bolt story need a reference to doping? Perhaps, but only because countryman Asafa Powell, the former world record-holder, expressed his discontent that the Jamaicans seemed doping control targets since arriving here. That targeting apparently was in answer to questions about the lack of unannounced, out-of-competition testing on the island. I brought all that up in the preview of the race that appeared in Thursday's editions of the Times and the Chicago Tribune.

Is it possible Bolt is just an extraordinary athlete? When I asked Jon Drummond, Tyson Gay's coach, what made Bolt remarkable, he said, "He is 6-foot-5.''

Never before has there been a 100-meter Olympic champion so tall. It seemed impossible that a man that big could uncoil his body from the blocks quickly enough to avoid falling too far behind before his enormous strides and stride turnover could come into play.

If we doubt Bolt, why shouldn't we doubt Michael Phelps and his four individual world records in these Olympics?

The argument that swimming should get more benefit of the doubt because it has avoided the doping scandals of track is specious. We all know that athletes in many sports have found sophisticated methods to beat doping control for years.

Track was chastened into wider testing, including all medalists, by the doping positive of Ben Johnson after winning the 1988 Olympic 100 meters. Swimming never tested all Olympic medal winners until 1996 and until recently has lagged behind track in number of out-of-competition tests.

So, even as Phelps said Sunday that he had been tested roughly 40 times in the past six weeks, that is not proof positive he is clean.

But couldn't Phelps be the exception, since it already was clear after last year's world championships that he is one-of-a-kind in the history of swimming? Couldn't Bolt be as well?

Imagine what athletes must feel about this. Many dirty ones have beaten the system, so the clean ones (yes, there are some) can't give complete assurances of their righteousness.

One of the joys of writing about sport is the chance to be witness and chronicler of the extraordinary. One of the worst things is wondering whether you can believe what you see -– and that you may eventually look like a fool for not having mentioned that possibility every time the extraordinary happens.

-- Phil Hersh

PHOTO: Jamaica's Usain Bolt heads to the finish line with his arms spread wide and still set a world record. Credit: Kay Nietfeld/EPA

BEIJING -- Well, that was impressive.

Usain Bolt, who doesn't even specialize in the 100 meters and didn't decide to run it until a few days before he had to make up his mind, won the race Saturday in a new world record of 9.69 seconds.

The amazing thing was that he could have run faster except that he started celebrating about five meters before the finish line. He might have put the record out of sight, the way FloJo did in 1988 for the women, if he had run through the finish line.

Wow.

He held the previous record at 9.72 seconds.

The other amazing thing was that he was by far the tallest sprinter in the final and, as a result, it took him a few meters, maybe 20, to unwind out of the blocks. Once he did, it was over.

No one was close at the end.

Richard Thompson of Trinidad and Tobago finished second in 9.89. Walter Dix of Tallahassee, Fla., was third in 9.91.

Asafa Powell, who until this year was considered Jamaica's most formidable sprinter, was fifth.

-- Randy Harvey

Photo: Usain Bolt celebrates with the Jamaican flag after winning the gold medal in the 100-meter run during the Beijing Games on Saturday. Credit: Thomas Kienzle/Associated Press Photo

BEIJING -- This may sound a little like election coverage.

One of the leading female sprinters in the world said the outcome of Saturday's final in the men's Olympic 100 is too close to call among Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell of Jamaica and Tyson Gay of the United States.

"It depends on who handles their nerves best,'' said Sanya Richards, the native Jamaican and naturalized U.S. citizen who is the Olympic favorite in the 400.

And Richards likes the unpredictability.

"It is great when someone dominates an event, but it's more exciting when someone is there to push you,'' she said.

-- Philip Hersh

Photos: From left, Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay are the favorites for the men's 100 meters in Beijing. Credit: AFP / Getty Images

BEIJING -- NBC commentator and four-time Olympic sprint medalist Ato Boldon was outspoken, as usual, in analyzing the 100 meters.

Asked if Tyson Gay's hamstring, injured at the Olympic trials, would hold up for four rounds, Boldon said bluntly, "No."

Asked if Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt would be hurt by his 100 inexperience, Boldon said, "You tend to panic more when you've been there. When something goes wrong, you start to think, 'Uh, oh, not this again.'

"Therein lies the disadvantage of someone like Asafa Powell.  You don't think that at 40 or 50 or 60 [meters] and he sees Gay or Bolt next to him, he's not going to have a flashback?"

Boldon was referring to Powell's collapse under pressure from Gay at the 2007 world championships.

And if Bolt gets a good start?

"It's over," Boldon said.

-- Philip Hersh

Photo: Tyson Gay crosses the finish line ahead of the Bahamas' Derrick Atkins after both had passed Asafa Powell during the men's 100-meter race at the 2007 world championships in Osaka, Japan. Credit: David J. Phillip / Associated Press

BEIJING -- After speaking informally on Sunday to a handful of U.S. media (yes, I was in that number), Tyson Gay did an hour-long news conference Monday afternoon.

On the biggest stage of his life, before global media assembled at the Olympics, the leading U.S. sprinter was the same as always: modest, soft-spoken, respectful. He was both refreshingly awestruck by his initial Olympic experience and unafraid to admit his excitement, especially about having NBA star Kobe Bryant know who he was and ask how his leg was doing.

He immediately sent a text message to his mother, Daisy: "Kobe asked me about my leg."

"This is the best experience I've ever had in my life," Gay said. "Opening ceremonies, words can't even describe it."

It gave him a birthday "candle" he will never forget, because soon after the cauldron at the Olympic stadium was lit, it was the start of Gay's 26th birthday.