UH ZOOM ZIP: I mean no great measure of disagreement with Amy's preview of races that go two or more times around the ovoid, but let's not slight the sprints (as a short-legged guy, I'm okay with slighting the hurdles). The 400 is my favorite race; the 200 is a lot of fun; and let's just put this out there: the 100-meter dash is, more than any other event, the spiritual core of the Olympics.
Before the Olympics became a commercial enterprise, before they added women and snow, before they even included throwing things and homoeroticism, they were a track meet involving exactly one event: a sprint. Though Wikipedia says that that race was closer to a 200M than a 100M, it was also run in a straight line. The origin of all Olympic sport, and its purest essence, was the simple question: Who can get from here to there faster?
In the 2794 years since that first race there have been, other than the truncation of the distance and a temporary suspension of clothing, no fundamental rule changes. Start here, run in a straight line, first one there wins. There is no fussing with limitations on how you can run the race (like racewalking or swim-stroke rules), no point awarded for artistic merit, no explanation of arcane terminology necessary to convey the idea to the neophyte spectator. A person could emerge from a lifetime in the jungle and, if not inclined to believe that people are fleeing the thunderstick, would get the gist within the first five meters.
The 100-meter dash, then, is most basic, most fundamental expression of the Olympic ideal. It is man, unaided by wind, gravity, or mechanical technology, and unimpeded by rules or physical obstacles, reaching the outer limit of human velocity.
So what are the odds that the three fastest human beings in history -- let that sink in for a second -- would be peaking at exactly the same time? (Actually, given the confluence of evolution, economics, and science both licit and illicit, I would say "pretty high.") American Tyson Gay, who has run a 9.77, prompted some evangelical web sites to auto-correct their squibs to "Homosexual Wins 100M". Jamaica's Asafa Powell has run a 9.74. And Jamaica's Usain Bolt, a giant who sometimes runs in what looks like a $5 Target muscle shirt and who comes out of the blocks looking like a rec-league forward recovering from a stumble, is both the fastest (at 9.72 seconds) and most unusual sprinter ever. And holy crap, he just popped a very conservative start, ran a relaxed 40 meters, slowed down, and jogged the last 20 meters, and he still posted a 9.92. That would have won the Olympics in all but the last three games and 1968, and it looked like a warm-down.
The idea that somebody might run under 9.7 seconds -- much less that the guy who does it might have to turn over legs long enough to carry him to 6'5" -- is amazing. I only wish, despite the inconvenience and the tape-delay, that it could happen in the Beijing evening, because a man a half-foot taller than all his competitors running under 9.7 seconds in a packed Bird's Nest at night with flash bulbs popping might break the ceiling for HDTV.
ETA: I delay-posted this last night before the results, so -- wow.
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