CLASH OF THE TITANS
IT’S THE BIGGEST 100m RACE SINCE BOLT RETIRED
FOR all the hype generated by Britain’s sprinters in the European Championships in Berlin, a far clearer picture of how the world’s fastest men measure up will be offered by a Diamond League engagement in Birmingham tomorrow.
In what arguably ranks as the best 100m field anywhere this season, the meet at the Alexander Stadium will go some way to establishing who is the man to beat a little over a year since Usain Bolt retired.
Where Britain fit into that new world order is a fascinating sub-plot, and it is somewhat convenient that this race should come so soon after Zharnel Hughes claimed the ‘golden generation’ of home sprinters is close to reasserting itself on the global stage.
He has just conquered Europe, of course, and his team-mate Reece Prescod was good enough for silver, but they know beating the fastest men of America, the Caribbean and Africa will be a far tougher test going into the second half of the Tokyo Olympic cycle.
They couldn’t have asked for a much harder examination of where they truly stand than what they will face tomorrow, with sprinting’s new wave of Noah Lyles, Christian Coleman, Akani Simbine and Cameron Burrell at the top of a stacked line-up.
Those four, along with Hughes and Prescod and the 2011 world champion Yohan Blake, will rank as the most hyped in Birmingham but the depth of the 16-man field is quite something. Eleven of them have gone under 10 seconds this season and 12 are aged 25 or under, with Lyles jointly the fastest man in the world in 2018 at 9.88sec and Coleman arriving as the world indoor champion and record-holder. The only missing member of the world’s top four this year is Ronnie Baker, who shares the world lead with Lyles.
Had he been there, it would give a wide-angle view of the post-Bolt landscape which, while rightly depressing for the sport’s bean counters, has at least thrown up the benefit of greater unpredictability in athletics’ marquee discipline.
For the first time since 2008, it is a lottery and the shake-up to find the next fastest man is intriguing going into next year’s World Championships. Hughes and Prescod will be part of the picture and the feeling remains that if Prescod, currently the slower of the two, can get his big frame out of the blocks quicker, he has the power to be a major player at the top.
This race, in particular, has the potential to see Prescod at his best, given his stated wish to chase a fast starter like Coleman out of the blocks, enabling him to hit the speeds that might trouble Linford Christie’s 25- year- old national record of 9.87sec.
Prescod, who ran 9.88 wind-assisted earlier in the year ahead of his 9.96sec silver in Berlin, said: ‘With the 100, if you have really good starters and good finishers, your best race will come out. If you have guys who finish strong, but if you don’t have that many starters, I haven’t been set up at the speed I should be.
‘ If you look at the Birmingham Diamond League and the guys who are confirmed, that’s going to be Olympic and world standard.’
In the wider world, excitement is currently drawn by Lyles, the larger-thanlife American who has just turned 21 and has recorded faster times for his age than the eight-time Olympic champion did.
By his 21st birthday, Bolt had gone 10.03sec for 100m and 19.75sec for the 200m, albeit having only run one competitive 100m race, while Lyles, who has taken to mimicking lightsabre fights and dancing in his blocks, only turned professional in 2016 but has gone 9.93sec and 19.69sec for the 200m, his stronger suit.
He has the kind of offthe-wall personality that engages a following, and an example of that is his belief that he will one day run a world-record 9.41sec based on a dream he once had. He said: ‘I had that dream in 2016. I ran it and the clock flashed 9.41 and I ran up to my mom and said, “Mom, I just ran 9.41!” And she was like, “That’s nice, Noah. That’s a world record!”
It’s funny how you can take things from reality and put them into dreams. But I do think I can run 9.41. I don’t know when but I’m going to try my best to make it happen.’
Lyles stands with American team-mates Coleman and Baker as the figure in whom most is expected in the 100m. It is a strong US generation of sprinters and is way out in front of Britain, who are enjoying unprecedented depth in the 100m too.
Aside from Hughes and Prescod, there will be three other sub-10sec Brits in the Birmingham field — Adam Gemili, Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake and the reigning Diamond League champion CJ Ujah.
The optimism within British Athletics is that one might step up and become a medal contender at the Doha World Championships next year and then Tokyo 2020. Considering no British man has won an individual Olympic sprint medal since Darren Campbell’s 200m silver at Sydney 2000, it is a tall order.
Tomorrow’s race ought to go some way to establishing just how tall.