On track for greatness

DONOVAN BAILEY is a believer. The Canadian has always believed that if he could find the right grain and get the angle of the hammer right, he could split the loo metres Olympic final the way he wanted. In Atlanta, Bailey got his angles right and struck.

Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago had won his semi-final in 9.93 seconds and wore rose-tinted shades. Denis Mitchell of the US was the 1992 bronze medallist. He muttered to himself and wore a silver ring through his right eyebrow. Namibian Frankie Fredericks, the silver medal winner in both the 100 and 200 in Barcelona and the race favourite, stood loose-limbed.

Bailey, beside him, glowered down the stretch of track and saw the sections unfold before him. The start, the acceleration, the peak, the relaxation for the final swoosh. In the stadium, 80,000 people watched.

Defending Olympic champion Linford Christie did not move. Christie knew that he had to get a flier. He no longer possessed the speed to win an Olympic final. His summer had been one of dejection and disappointment and he limped into the Games with the threat of retirement hanging over him.

Christie's nerve failed him. The first time he broke too quickly and the field was recalled. The second time the runners were out several strides before the starter heard the pitch in his earphones. The technology told him that Boldon had reacted to the gun in .082 of a second. No human, say the officials, can react quicker than .1 of a second. Again the sprinters went to their marks. The gun sounded for a third time. Again the athletes were called back. Christie had pushed his luck too far and had beaten the gun. You can't beat the gun.

I didn't notice Christie being tossed," says Bailey. "When I get deep into focus about what I have to do, I don't care who's around me."

At the fourth time of asking the race finally got off for real. Mitchell shot to the front, but was caught at 35 metres by Boldon. Fredericks, with his gliding style, took to the front at 60 metres and looked as though he might claim gold. Bailey, who had not figured at all at that stage, came streaming up the middle so quickly that his disappointing start became irrelevant: He overtook Fredericks to win in 9.84 seconds and pocketed Leroy Burrell's three-year-old world record.

Fredericks's 9.89 and Boldon's 9.90 times were the fastest ever placings for an Olympic final. Bailey's win was a mould breaker. Jim Hines, twice in 1968; Calvin Smith, 1983; Carl Lewis, 1988; Leroy Burrell, 1991; Carl Lewis, 1991; Leroy Burrell, 1994. The event's recent history had been dominated by Americans. A pure lineage. World record holders stretching back almost 30 years.

"The only person in history who has ever broken the world record from a start is Ben Johnson and we know his story. I don't get caught up in starts. I wasn't worried," said Bailey.

HE SWAGGERS up the foyer of the St James' Court Hotel in London, unfurls his long limbs under the table in the restaurant and peers down at his meal. People stare at Bailey knowing that he is someone, but not knowing quite who. An athlete certainly. What other physique can successfully marry such dimensions. A size 46 jacket and a 28-inch waist. The build of an Olympic and World Champion.

"So this beef is good, huh. I've heard things. If I'm running 11.5 next year, here's the reason why," he says.

Bailey is on the circuit. He's just been to Monte Carlo for the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) gala, then to Gateshead in Newcastle where Peter Beardsley and Les Ferdinand presented him with a Newcastle United shirt with the number 9.84 on the back. He's doing the rounds. Pressing flesh. Answering questions and promoting the showdown with Olympic 200 and 400 gold medallist Michael Johnson.

In the spring of next year the two will run against each other in the Sky Dome in Toronto on a specially laid two-lane track. It's the heavyweight championship of the world over a compromise distance of 150 metres. A winner and a loser. An American and a Canadian. And one million dollars for the winner. Traditionalists may baulk. But the promoters believe it's too good to fail. Bailey believes he's too good to fail.

"I reach top speed and Michael reaches top speed, he's still in trouble. He's still four miles an hour slower. In Atlanta, I was down on Frankie who's a faster sprinter than Michael. Actually, everyone in that race is a faster sprinter than Michael Johnson. If we were going for the fastest man in the world he'd be ranked in the top 30 - maybe.

"He was putting out that he was fast over 100 metres. But the only way to prove that is to step in there. The 200 metres proves you've speed and endurance. It doesn't prove you are the fastest guy on the planet. It's like comparing a fuel efficient car against a souped up racer.

Few would dare castigate Johnson as being fuel efficient". Bailey clearly doesn't approve of the Texan's claims on his World's Greatest Sprinter title. He doesn't like the American champion's attitude. Doesn't like America's insularity. Nor does he like to hold his tongue.

"Frankie wanted to beat the Americans. Ato Boldon wanted to beat the Americans. I wanted to beat the Americans. Michael Green, I think, did too. Until we get the respect we deserve from them we'll keep beating them. I mean Michael Johnson has embarrassed himself a few hundred times and Americans have too - by being so ignorant. Attempting to tell the world that Michael, clocked at 23 mph, is faster than me at 27 mph... I mean they're making themselves the laughing stock of the world.

"It's also an embarrassment for them to discredit other countries for the success of non-American athletes in Atlanta. After Canada won the 4x100 relay, NBC showed the American team jogging around the track. I mean. .. their coach had publicly guaranteed a gold medal. I think it's crazy."

In 1993, the world was lousy with 10.2 sprinters. Bailey was just that. "ln 1992, I could run 10.2 windy. In 1993, I ran 10.2 windy. I'd been running a legal 10.3 all those years. But I'd done absolutely no training. Nothing."

At the World Championships in Stuttgart, Bailey made the Canadian squad, but was dropped from the relay team. He was annoyed and was turning the ear of anyone who would listen. Leaning against the perimeter fencing at the practice track in Germany, coach Dan Pfaff listened. Pfaff could see that Bailey was a biomechanical mess. Sometimes he covered the distance in 48 strides. Other times he took 52.

Because of a disorder in his hip following a fall from a tree when he was young which broke his tail bone, he strides further with his right leg than his left. He sometimes wobbled out of the blocks. His arms flailed. He didn't breathe properly. As veteran American journalist Michael Farber said before the Olympics - "he's the only man under 10 seconds in the world who looks as though he is dashing for the last chopper out of Saigon."

Pfaff ran his qualified eye over Bailey and could see the distribution of muscle mass, the impressive balance of quadriceps and hamstrings on his impossibly long legs. Pfaff said to Bailey he could help him and in 1994 the sprinter flew down to Austin, Texas to seriously begin his career.

"He just said I had the tools to get better. So I went with him. After seven weeks I'd already taken three-tenths off my best legal time. But I was very injury prone because I hadn't trained. He's still correcting my technique. He's not there quite yet."

Bailey is still learning and believes he can run faster. "In the final my start was very poor and for the last 20 metres I was reaching."

He has some educating to do, too. Bailey has been one of the black Canadian sprinters who have shouldered the wounds of the last, most famous, black Canadian sprinter, Ben Johnson. It has never been lost on him or the others of the 4x100 team in Atlanta (Robert Esmie, Bruny Surin and Glenroy Gilbert) that Johnson won the 100 metres gold as a Canadian in 1988, then lost it as a Jamaican-born sprinter.

"I watched the 1988 final in a club with my friends," says Bailey. "It was amazing. Fantastic. Nothing could ever have been better for the sport in Canada. Then it couldn't have been worse. The biggest sports story in history. The biggest disappointment in history.

"But I've always said that the only thing Ben did wrong in Seoul was to take drugs. He should never have been referred to as the Jamaican-born sprinter. You're not one country's hero and another country's goat.

"The other sprinters who came along immediately after Ben - Glenroy and Bruny particularly - got ridiculed and disrespected for years. The sport was dead in our country. Canada had a hard time accepting another sprinter. I understand the culture. You sell your soul and get behind your athlete. But because of '88 they had a problem doing that."

Canada has warmed. Bailey's World Championship win in 1995 in Gothenburg revitalised interest, although the country still held its breath. The country has come to embrace the Jamaican-born Canadian hero, however. This year Bailey won their sports personality of the year award.

Bailey is more than a runner. Critically, he is the antithesis of Ben Johnson. Bailey is inviting and deadly handsome, Johnson was introspective and brooding. Bailey is articulate and confidently opinionated Johnson, to the end, was dependent and, from childhood, suffered from a speech impediment.

Johnson's ascendancy was totally rooted in his track successes. Much of Bailey's confidence is derived from prior success as a businessman in the property world. At 22, he already had a house and a Porsche.

The million dollar run represents the most generous ever payout for a race. Clearly Bailey isn't blind to commerce. But importantly he says, "there's pride on the line here. I won't go into this race unprepared. There's only a winner and a loser".

But if Bailey was reaching for the last 20 metres over 100 how will he answer the demands of 150? How will he run the bend, something at which Michael Johnson excels? If he loses, how will it affect his confidence for the World Championships in Athens in August? It's all an irrelevancy.

"I've the inside lane. I've seen Michael Johnson sit and use someone else to run the first 30 or 40 metres of his 200, so he can determine exactly where he is and where his body position is. I'm going to show him how it feels."

Again, Bailey is finding the grain, looking for the angles.