U.S. sprinter Gay practices: ‘Injury free, no pain’
Injury woes in past for top U.S. sprinter after solid workout
By Philip Hersh | Tribune Olympic Bureau
8:34 PM CDT, August 10, 2008
BEIJING - It is one thing for Tyson Gay to hope to outrun the world’s fastest man, Usain Bolt of Jamaica, in the Olympic 100 meters.
Outrunning a lightning bolt is another matter.
So Gay waited as rain turned into an electrical storm as he prepared for a brief workout Sunday afternoon at Beijing Normal University.
Then, in a flash, the U.S. sprint star proved he could make up for lost time, from the 90 minutes of a rain delay to the weeks off the track that followed his July 5 leg injury in the 200 quarterfinals at the U.S. Olympic trials.
Gay did nine sets of warm-up strides in regular running shoes, then put on spikes for a workout set of a hard 60 meters, a hard 80 and finally a hard 100.
This would be the first time any reporters had seen him run that distance since his victory in the 100 at the Olympic trials.
Gay stripped off his shirt. Jon Drummond, his coach, stood barefoot in the infield. Gay settled into a starting position, without blocks to accelerate his departure, then took off.
He roared down the wet track, covering the 100 in something right around 10 seconds, according to a couple of stopwatches.
A smiling Drummond declined to reveal exactly what his watch read. “Fast,” the coach said.
Gay, the reigning world champion in the 100, had shown he was up to speed again.
“I’ve been looking for an indicator to let me know where I’m going to be at, and I think today let me know,” Gay told the half-dozen reporters watching the workout.
In the first interview Gay had given since arriving in China, he revealed that further examination in Germany had shown the injury was more serious than a mild hamstring strain, as originally thought.
“I had a real specific MRI, and [doctors] said I had a slight strain in my tendon. So it was a little worse than what the U.S. doctors had seen,” Gay said.
Speaking during the short walk from the track to a training room, Gay did not provide details about the tendon strain that added more uncertainty to his comeback.
“I did have slight doubts, but that’s just a part of it,” Gay said. “Being a track and field athlete, sometimes you think you’re Superman, you can run any time you feel any pain, do a warm-up, spray some ‘stop pain’ on it, and it will go away. It went away in about a couple of weeks.”
Gay is excited about the confrontation with Bolt, who ran a world-record 9.72 seconds this season, and another Jamaican, Asafa Powell, the former world record-holder whom Gay routed at the 2007 worlds.
“Someone told me this is one of the most anticipated 100-meter dashes in Olympic history,” Gay said of the event, which takes places Friday and Saturday.
There was great anticipation Sunday over Gay’s fitness level because he has not raced since the U.S. trials, canceling a scheduled appearance at a July 25 London meet. He had spent nearly a month in Germany, a pre-planned trip that unexpectedly included visits to renowned sports doctor Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfarth.
“My recovery has gone pretty well,” Gay said. "I’ve gotten a lot of rest.
“Everyone knows I haven’t raced since nationals. I think that was good for me. If I would have ran [all rounds of] the 200, I would have been fatigued. I have seen a lot of people from the U.S. not running as fast as they were. A lot of peoples’ bodies are tired. So I think this rest really did me well.”
After Sunday’s workout, Gay estimated he was at about 85 percent of his level at the Olympic trials, where he ran a U.S. record of 9.77 in the semifinals and a wind-aided 9.68 in the final, the fastest a man ever has covered 100 meters on foot.
“I’m happy with today’s workout—injury-free, no pain,” Gay said. “I felt pretty confident.”