Yesterday I stood alone on the start line of the 100 metres in the Bird's Nest Stadium. Rain was falling from a sky criss-crossed with the wire-cameras that will move as quickly as the athletes. Ahead the white lane lines stretched away through the puddles towards the finish line. Half-way down, even from this low vantage point, you can just make out the Olympic rings embossed into the hard rubber surface of the running track.
Come Saturday night it will be transformed but the view down the track will remain the same. Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay will, barring injury mishap in qualifying, walk up the ramp from the call-up room below and out into the glare of the floodlights that are recessed into the stadium roof. The eagerly awaited men's Olympic 100m final will be minutes away and how each individual absorbs all of those images and the expectation may well prove the difference between three men so closely matched that even the bookies cannot make up their minds who will win.
The three fastest men of all-time in one race with sport's greatest prize on offer is a rare occurrence that will, it must be hoped, live in the memory for all the right reasons. Each man has legitimate claims to the gold medal and each has his supporters from the world of athletics. Bolt is the raw talent who has gate crashed the party and is seemingly calling the tunes. By the time he gets through the rounds here the Jamaican will have almost doubled the number of top-flight 100m races in which he has run.
As Maurice Greene said the other day, it is frightening that a man who is still learning the event is now the world record holder and poised to become Olympic champion. He has the exuberance of youth about him and, although his smiles are as rare as his defeats, it would be a mistake to label him as anything other than lively. It is rumoured that his team-mate and rival, Asafa Powell, insisted Bolt was not close to his own sleeping arrangements.
Powell gives the impression at times that sleeping is what he would like to do most of the time. I have often used the word languid to describe him and it does the job well. Only when he manages to ignite the passion and talent he clearly has do we get to enjoy the most aesthetically pleasing sprinter of the three. Being so good can seem like a drag to him at times and his complaint this week about reportedly excessive blood testing came from a man who would patently prefer to do nothing so strenuous instead.
If the two Jamaicans appear easier to stereotype, then that is partly because Tyson Gay is more difficult to pigeon hole. He has none of the swagger normally associated with sprint kings, especially those from across the Atlantic, and has public respect for his rivals and an almost reverential admiration for those who have gone before him. He deals with the media in an assured if slightly measured way but is more open than most in his position usually are. Gay calls his mum in the final minutes before he attempts to beat the world - not because she knows a lot about sprintingbut because she makes him feel good.
He is refreshingly proactive about drug testing and thinks the Olympic champion should declare himself clean and be able to prove it. He says he even tries to say good luck to his competitors on the start line.
As these words are read, the three of them will already have started their campaign in the first round. As the final approaches tomorrow night, their idiosyncrasies will be accentuated and, as long as all three are firing on all cylinders, then the way in which they handle the developing maelstrom will probably be the determining factor.
I am not silly enough to venture a prediction but I have canvassed opinion from a few who have been there themselves. They mostly seem to agree that, contrary to uninformed opinion, the person who gets out first will not necessarily win. Greene and Ato Boldon gave Bolt the best chance but Tyson Gay probably edges it on overall support.
Unfortunately for Powell he has yet to convince many that he can indeed cope with the pressure of the occasion. He has the chance to change that here. It is likely that whoever wins will have to run faster than any human being has done before. The wind will be negligible and the track is designed for speed. The question is which of the three will stand on that start line looking beyond those Olympic rings and be able to hold himself together enough to deliver the perfect race.
Staff
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