Powell and Gay's phony war.
September 12th 2007 16:12
Both were due to race at the Golden League event in Brussels this Friday night, either in the 100m or in different races with Powell taking the 100m and Gay the 200m being the more likely outcome.
However even that won’t happen now as Gay has pulled out of several events now citing tiredness – understandable considering the 9 races he ran at the world championships.
But is there more to it than that?
Gay might want to bask in the glory of being world champion – just look at Christine Ohuruogu – wins the title and then next race out gets taken apart by Sanya Richards who runs a world leading time.
It definitely knocks the British athlete down a few pegs in the track and field public’s eyes and maybe Gay doesn’t want to risk it.
The second possibility is that there could now be a genuine fear in the Gay camp that Powell has rediscovered his form of last year and is now untouchable, to put it in simple terms Powell has now ran a full tenth (easing down in the final few strides) faster than Gay has this year – a huge gap in the world of elite sprinting.
This makes sense given the timing of the pull out, it would have been easy enough for Gay’s coach and agent to agree with their athlete how long they would take a break from competing for – after all each race pulled out of is a missed paycheque.
This brings me onto the final possibility – Money.
A sprint rivalry is very much like a boxing match.
Two competitors with their own personalities, strengths and weaknesses.
When they go up against each other one is sure to lose their reputation – and their earning potential along with it.
But the sheer public demand for such a contest grows exponentially with each athlete’s continued success – and so would the money.
Here you have the world record holder in 1 corner and the world champion in the other – it simply doesn’t get better than this!
It’s also eerily familiar to the situation we had two years ago between Powell and Justin Gatlin and then much of the 2005 season was spent dancing around a possible race date before the world championships in Helsinki.
So don’t go thinking that Gay vs. Powell will be a regular fixture next year.
Nobody wants the best two athletes to race each other every week – it would be boring and wouldn’t give the sport the buzz it sorely needs to compete in a world with Soccer, American Football, Basketball etc.
So we are only likely to ever get 1 or 2 meetings between these heavyweights of the sport outside the major championships.
And it doesn’t look good for this season.
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