By Christopher Hunt
all photos courtesy Victah Sailer / www.PhotoRun.net
NEW YORK – Tyson Gay said that he didn’t want to run fast. He said he didn’t want to push too hard and that he planned to work on technique. He lied.
Ok, maybe he didn’t lie. But no one expected that Gay would do this. He swallowed the field on the first curve of the 200 meters at the Reebok Grand Prix and won in 19.58 seconds, the third-fastest time ever run.
“I’m very surprised,” Gay said. “I didn’t even have a time goal. I just wanted to work on my start and see where that got me.”
His start was enough to make the largely Caribbean crowd at Ichan Stadium gasp as he crushed the first 50 meters and erased the stagger on Wallace Spearmon. The last time Gay ran a high-profile 200-meter race he was carted off the track at the Olympic Trials last summer. Then he went on to a disastrous Olympics Games performance in Beijing, where he failed to make the 100-meter final, looked shaky in the trials, and his 4x100 team dropped the baton in the trials and failed to advance there as well.
But Saturday’s race announced that even in the Usain Bolt fanfare and the Jamaican sprinting frenzy, Gay is still among the best sprinters to ever lace up. The shock was partly because it’s Gay’s first sprint race of the season and he delayed his training schedule because of a knee injury in November.
“It does a lot for my confidence,” he said. “Nineteen-five was a goal, but I didn’t expect it to come this early in the season.”
Jamaican sprinting has dominated the talk around track and field since the Olympics and even the majority of the questions asked of Gay leading up to the meet had more to do with Usain Bolt, who wasn’t even scheduled to compete. But the Reebok Grand Prix provided a stage for Gay to win some fans back and he made sure to find the spotlight, especially after his tremendous start out the blocks.
“After that I was just running for my life,” he said. “You never know where those guys are behind you.”
Gay’s performance highlighted a stellar showing by American sprinters and the meet. Michael Rodgers, who made his name this past indoor season, won the 100 in a wind-aided 9.93, in a field that included Jamaican former world record-holder Asafa Powell and Trinidadian Olympic silver-medalist Richard Thompson.
“I was just thinking, ‘Aw man, I just beat a gang of medalists,’” he said.
Carmelita Jeter also won the women’s 100 in a wind-aided time of 10.85 with Muna Lee behind in 10.88. Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell finished third in 10.91. Lauryn Williams and Allyson Felix both turned in world-leading times. Williams won the women’s 200 in 22.34 and Felix lowered her world-leader in the 400 in 50.50. Leo Manzano also won the men’s 1500 in a meet record 3:34.13.
Reach Christopher Hunt at chunt@armorytrack.com.
all photos courtesy Victah Sailer / www.PhotoRun.net