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Triello of characters complete 100m spectacle
(Aly Song/Reuters)
Usain Bolt of Jamaica competes in the men’s 100m heat at the National Stadium during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
Simon Barnes
div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;}Simon Barnes's Olympic blog
The film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly climaxes with a three-way shoot-out between the adjectivised main characters. Not a duel but a triello. Today, with a bit of luck, we shall be watching another triello as the men’s 100 metres comes to its equally smouldering climax.
These days we are all a little reluctant to make claims for the goodness of sprinters. There have been too many bad and too many ugly over recent years, marring the actuality or the memory of three of the past five Olympic Games. But drugs or no drugs, there is no doubting the power of the spectacle of three men setting their wills against each other, knowing that, for the winner, the prize is the supreme moment of his life.
It began yesterday in unexpected blessed sunshine and Usain Bolt slouched to his mark to begin. He has that marvellous “what the hell’s worry supposed to be” air that is something of a Jamaican speciality. Nothing fussed him, not even the apparently rather unexpected detonation of the starting pistol.
He is a massive man – 6ft 5in - and he looks more a fast bowler than a runner. He used to be one and he would have been fearsome to face, even if he never let go of the ball. Village green cricketers are always talking of ferocious fast bowlers who “run up quicker than they bowl”. Bolt must have been the prime example, but if he never properly mastered the art of bowling – some say that he was a bit of a chucker – he got the running part pretty well right.
He was in the first heat and he set the tone with an almost insolent nonchalance. The Jamaicans have been kitted out with a sort of après-beach vest, rather than a spray-on Superman outfit, and it suited Bolt’s sloppy ease of manner to perfection. The gun went. Mildly surprised, he eased himself to his feet and jogged down the track to the tape.
Well, perhaps he loped. Certainly he was in no itchin’ hurry. All the same, he got there ahead of everybody else and in 10.2sec. What would he do if was actually bothered? He’s not the fastest of starters because there’s an awful lot of him to get standing up and moving forward, but once he’s up, there’s no catching him.
He needs only 41 paces to get from one end of the straight to the other, he is the world record-holder at 9.72 and if anyone lets him get ahead, they’re not going to pass him. He doesn’t even think the 100 metres is his best event.
Asafa Powell, the second Jamaican, was second up, shaven-head, more consciously the star, more self-assertively the superman. He ran a little faster, slowing up with easy confidence.
The third participant in the triello was Tyson Gay, of the United States, looking distinctly edgy. Mind you, Buddha would look twitchy standing next to Bolt. Gay’s first run hummed with effort, with neuroses. But sprinting is a weird event; neuroses can be as helpful as calm. It’s all in the way these things take you.
The evening session for the places in the semi-finals changed the nature of the triello. Gay could manage only second in his heat and he didn’t look like a man easing up. He pulled a hamstring in those always ferocious US Olympic trials a few weeks back and pulled out of the 200 metres. He still looked bothered yesterday. “I felt good and relaxed,” he said, but I suspect him of lying.
Powell ran 10.02 easing up, in full control, but the evening was effortlessly – and I pick the word with care – stolen by Bolt. He ran 9.92 and he hurried only the first 50 metres. After that he was looking about in mild interest at the scene around him. It was an utterly outrageous piece of running.
He looks a man that destiny is calling, rather in the manner of an alarm clock. How fast will Bolt go if he wakes up? Don’t miss it. And just think, the number of times he has been tested here already, he might even be clean.
A goddess in disguise? Only one way to silence doubters
I found myself unexpectedly close to the action at the Bird’s Nest stadium yesterday as I watched the hurdles event of the women’s heptathlon. As a result, I was able to see the contestants as they are. I promise you, athletes are quite different up close. On the television, or even from the usual distant vantage point of a live spectator, you get no real impression of their utterly exceptional nature.
On television, with its close-ups, its faces, the commentary, you get to see the fragility of the athletes, the humanity. But up close you get the perfection, the divinity. Well, I suppose that is a bit over the top, but you certainly don’t get the impression that they’re just like you and me. It’s that extraordinary thing of being perfectly at home in your own body. It’s not a thing you find often outside such places as an Olympic stadium.
One of those goddesses was Kelly Sotherton, Great Britain’s main hope for the heptathlon and one of the few in the running for any medal in track and field. It was Sotherton, you will recall, who was slagged off by her coach at the 2004 Olympic Games for merely getting bronze. “Wimp” was the term used. These days, Sotherton is inclined to agree with that estimate; the silver at least was hers to lose. She was hiding behind her shades here and I was reminded of Mia Farrow playing a gangster’s moll in the Woody Allen film, Broadway Danny Rose. It was a bit like casting Bambi as the Big Bad Wolf, but she made it work by wearing shades all the time. Sotherton’s shades were there to tell us that she was not a wimp. Remember, what’s important is not what we believe, but what she believes.
She finished fourth in blistering heat in the opening event, the hurdles, which left her fourth overall. The high jump was next, a tricky event in which a single second of inspiration in that absurdly complicated sequence of movements can change everything. She followed her personal best in the hurdles with a season’s best in the high jump, but it’s at moments such as this that champions find something more.
There was a feeling of something missing, of a lack of authority, of a lack of self-certainty. Behind the shades, I suspect she blinked. On, then, to the evening and the shot. Not really a strength event, not in the context of the heptathlon, more an explosion of timing. But the timing eluded her. No putt was even close to her best. Time to show something, and Sotherton ran a personal best in the 200 metres. That’s two personal bests and a season’s best on the day. It probably won’t be good enough. That’s what the Olympic Games means. You spill your guts for four years in training, but one small slip at the one time it counts, then it’s all for nothing.
It’s a hard, hard thing. Sotherton has three more events today, but this includes her worst one, the javelin, in which she is unkindly said to throw like a girl. She was very down at the end of the day, lying in third place. Ah, but she’s still more goddess than wimp.
(Aly Song/Reuters)
Usain Bolt of Jamaica competes in the men’s 100m heat at the National Stadium during the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games
Simon Barnes
div#related-article-links p a, div#related-article-links p a:visited {color:#06c;}Simon Barnes's Olympic blog
The film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly climaxes with a three-way shoot-out between the adjectivised main characters. Not a duel but a triello. Today, with a bit of luck, we shall be watching another triello as the men’s 100 metres comes to its equally smouldering climax.
These days we are all a little reluctant to make claims for the goodness of sprinters. There have been too many bad and too many ugly over recent years, marring the actuality or the memory of three of the past five Olympic Games. But drugs or no drugs, there is no doubting the power of the spectacle of three men setting their wills against each other, knowing that, for the winner, the prize is the supreme moment of his life.
It began yesterday in unexpected blessed sunshine and Usain Bolt slouched to his mark to begin. He has that marvellous “what the hell’s worry supposed to be” air that is something of a Jamaican speciality. Nothing fussed him, not even the apparently rather unexpected detonation of the starting pistol.
He is a massive man – 6ft 5in - and he looks more a fast bowler than a runner. He used to be one and he would have been fearsome to face, even if he never let go of the ball. Village green cricketers are always talking of ferocious fast bowlers who “run up quicker than they bowl”. Bolt must have been the prime example, but if he never properly mastered the art of bowling – some say that he was a bit of a chucker – he got the running part pretty well right.
He was in the first heat and he set the tone with an almost insolent nonchalance. The Jamaicans have been kitted out with a sort of après-beach vest, rather than a spray-on Superman outfit, and it suited Bolt’s sloppy ease of manner to perfection. The gun went. Mildly surprised, he eased himself to his feet and jogged down the track to the tape.
Well, perhaps he loped. Certainly he was in no itchin’ hurry. All the same, he got there ahead of everybody else and in 10.2sec. What would he do if was actually bothered? He’s not the fastest of starters because there’s an awful lot of him to get standing up and moving forward, but once he’s up, there’s no catching him.
He needs only 41 paces to get from one end of the straight to the other, he is the world record-holder at 9.72 and if anyone lets him get ahead, they’re not going to pass him. He doesn’t even think the 100 metres is his best event.
Asafa Powell, the second Jamaican, was second up, shaven-head, more consciously the star, more self-assertively the superman. He ran a little faster, slowing up with easy confidence.
The third participant in the triello was Tyson Gay, of the United States, looking distinctly edgy. Mind you, Buddha would look twitchy standing next to Bolt. Gay’s first run hummed with effort, with neuroses. But sprinting is a weird event; neuroses can be as helpful as calm. It’s all in the way these things take you.
The evening session for the places in the semi-finals changed the nature of the triello. Gay could manage only second in his heat and he didn’t look like a man easing up. He pulled a hamstring in those always ferocious US Olympic trials a few weeks back and pulled out of the 200 metres. He still looked bothered yesterday. “I felt good and relaxed,” he said, but I suspect him of lying.
Powell ran 10.02 easing up, in full control, but the evening was effortlessly – and I pick the word with care – stolen by Bolt. He ran 9.92 and he hurried only the first 50 metres. After that he was looking about in mild interest at the scene around him. It was an utterly outrageous piece of running.
He looks a man that destiny is calling, rather in the manner of an alarm clock. How fast will Bolt go if he wakes up? Don’t miss it. And just think, the number of times he has been tested here already, he might even be clean.
A goddess in disguise? Only one way to silence doubters
I found myself unexpectedly close to the action at the Bird’s Nest stadium yesterday as I watched the hurdles event of the women’s heptathlon. As a result, I was able to see the contestants as they are. I promise you, athletes are quite different up close. On the television, or even from the usual distant vantage point of a live spectator, you get no real impression of their utterly exceptional nature.
On television, with its close-ups, its faces, the commentary, you get to see the fragility of the athletes, the humanity. But up close you get the perfection, the divinity. Well, I suppose that is a bit over the top, but you certainly don’t get the impression that they’re just like you and me. It’s that extraordinary thing of being perfectly at home in your own body. It’s not a thing you find often outside such places as an Olympic stadium.
One of those goddesses was Kelly Sotherton, Great Britain’s main hope for the heptathlon and one of the few in the running for any medal in track and field. It was Sotherton, you will recall, who was slagged off by her coach at the 2004 Olympic Games for merely getting bronze. “Wimp” was the term used. These days, Sotherton is inclined to agree with that estimate; the silver at least was hers to lose. She was hiding behind her shades here and I was reminded of Mia Farrow playing a gangster’s moll in the Woody Allen film, Broadway Danny Rose. It was a bit like casting Bambi as the Big Bad Wolf, but she made it work by wearing shades all the time. Sotherton’s shades were there to tell us that she was not a wimp. Remember, what’s important is not what we believe, but what she believes.
She finished fourth in blistering heat in the opening event, the hurdles, which left her fourth overall. The high jump was next, a tricky event in which a single second of inspiration in that absurdly complicated sequence of movements can change everything. She followed her personal best in the hurdles with a season’s best in the high jump, but it’s at moments such as this that champions find something more.
There was a feeling of something missing, of a lack of authority, of a lack of self-certainty. Behind the shades, I suspect she blinked. On, then, to the evening and the shot. Not really a strength event, not in the context of the heptathlon, more an explosion of timing. But the timing eluded her. No putt was even close to her best. Time to show something, and Sotherton ran a personal best in the 200 metres. That’s two personal bests and a season’s best on the day. It probably won’t be good enough. That’s what the Olympic Games means. You spill your guts for four years in training, but one small slip at the one time it counts, then it’s all for nothing.
It’s a hard, hard thing. Sotherton has three more events today, but this includes her worst one, the javelin, in which she is unkindly said to throw like a girl. She was very down at the end of the day, lying in third place. Ah, but she’s still more goddess than wimp.