For all his flirting with world records, Tyson Gay has never carried himself with a sprinter’s swagger. Speaking just above a hush, he is not the type to engage his rivals over the airwaves or make public guarantees. So it was hardly out of character this week when he made the sprinter’s anti-promise.
There would be no blistering times from him this weekend, he said. He had only just resumed speed work. And when someone asked about the likelihood of a world record, he could not help but chuckle.
All of that melted away in 19.58 seconds of blazing intensity on Saturday as Gay delivered the third-quickest 200m performance in history at the Reebok Grand Prix meet on Randalls Island, New York. Only Usain Bolt’s time from the Beijing Olympics (19.30) and Michael Johnson’s mark from the 1996 Atlanta Games (19.32) are lower.
“I was very surprised,” Gay said. “I didn’t have a time goal for this meet. It was more about work on my start, work on my technique and just seeing what came out of the execution.”
Even more surprising, it was Gay’s first race over the distance this year. Until Saturday, he had only a couple of 400m races under his belt to gauge his fitness after shaking off hamstring and knee trouble.
Only his competitors seemed to expect a performance like the one Gay turned in.
“That’s just Tyson,” said Jeremy Wariner, shaking his head.
Gay exploded out of the blocks for a torrid opening stretch on the quick track at Icahn Stadium and had the race all but won halfway through.
The curve in the 200m is one of the most intensely technical sections in sprinting, but Gay has built a fearsome reputation negotiating it. And on Saturday, it was all he needed to leave his fellow Americans Wallace Spearmon and Xavier Carter in his wake. They finished in 19.98 and 20.27.
“I try to run the turn pretty smooth,” Gay said. “But once I get on the straightaway, I basically try to run for my life because you never know where no one is.”
After a season last year that unraveled in seconds, Gay had a run on Saturday that was an emphatic reminder that top-class sprinting did not begin and end with Bolt. At last summer’s United States Olympic trials, where he began as the Beijing favorite in the 100 and the 200, Gay sustained a hamstring injury that ruined his chances.
He never made it to the Olympic 200 race and finished a distant fifth in the 100m Bolt Show. When Gay came home from Beijing empty-handed, he avoided the news media and public appearances as much as possible. He said he felt he had let everyone down.
“Then once I got started training, I just felt I had to stay focused and try to redeem myself,” Gay said.
The first step came on Saturday. Gay says he does not yet know where the next one will come because he has not built a schedule for this season, but it will almost certainly culminate in Berlin with the World Championships, barring any unforeseen setbacks.
The rest of the afternoon on Randalls Island felt far more casual than Gay’s race. Like him, most of the other high-profile sprinters were using the meet to work back to form.
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