Tim Montgomery had to watch from the sidelines as Dwain Chambers won an old-fashioned 100m at the Crystal Palace meet in south London Friday.
The world record holder failed to make the final in his last race before the world championships in Paris later this month.
But Chambers' win was bittersweet -- technical problems delayed the start by 15 minutes and a switch to manual timing meant the first five sprinters were all given 10.00 seconds as their finish time.
Jonathan Edwards' participation in Paris is in doubt after he was taken off the field on a stretcher after injuring his right ankle in the triple jump. The world and Olympic champion was hurt on the final leaps and lay motionless in the pit, unable to get up without assistance.
Chambers and the crowd got a shock when the scoreboard originally flashed his time as 9.53 -- which would have smashed Montgomery's world record of 9.78. It was soon corrected, but the exact time can't be determined as manual timing only measures in tenths of a second.
"I wasn't perturbed by the delay, I just knew I was going to win," said Chambers. "Everything went right for me and that's what mattered. If I can handle that, I can handle anything."
Meet organizer Alan Pascoe said the technical problem was ``clearly a system fault'' with the equipment supplied by Omega, which is used at the Olympics and Golden League meets.
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