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Greene makes a statement
EDMONTON, Alberta -- For a man with two world titles and an Olympic crown at 100 meters already on his résumé, Maurice Greene's gold-medal run in Sunday's 100 at the track and field world championships might have been his finest hour -- or, converting that to sprinter years, his finest sub-10 seconds. Greene, running in Lane 4, appeared to have the race under control at 70 meters, which meant almost a sure victory since he generally holds form as well as any sprinter over the last few strides. But just as his countryman Tim Montgomery, in Lane 3, was disappearing from camera range, Greene reacted as if someone had taken a bite out of his left leg. He didn't so much stride off the leg in the last three steps; he hopped or gimped or skipped or did something that should have rendered him too weak to hold off a stellar field that included Montgomery, Bernard Williams of the U.S. and Ato Boldon of Trinidad. "Fifteen meters before the finish I felt a pinch in my quad and I said, Keep going," Greene explained. "Then I felt a pinch in my hamstring and I said, Don't stop. In a race like that, you have to kill me to stop me from getting through it." Greene did more than get through it. He finished in 9.82 seconds while practically falling into Lane 3 at the line. His time was just 3/100ths off the world record he set in Athens in 1999. Montgomery was second in 9.85, followed by Williams in 9.94, Boldon in 9.98 and Dwain Chambers of Great Britain in 9.99. The race marked the first U.S. sweep in a worlds or Olympics final since the '91 worlds when Carl Lewis, Leroy Burrell and Dennis Mitchell finished 1-2-3. It was surely the first race in history in which five runners clocked under 10 seconds while running into a headwind (0.2 meters per second). Greene's three-peat matched Lewis' triple of 1983, '87 and '91, when the worlds were contested every four years. Greene beamed after the race when asked if his accomplishments merited comparisons to Lewis. "I want to be known as the greatest 100-meter sprinter ever," he said. "Maybe now people will start thinking of me like that." Greene already has the same psychological advantage over his competitors that Lewis used to have. When Lewis moved in and out of the blocks, you could sense that sprinters in the other seven lanes were almost as aware of his movements as their own. Bruny Surin, an Olympic gold medalist on Canada's '96 4x100-meter relay team, says Greene beats many sprinters just by getting into the blocks. "All the guys are talking about Maurice. In the papers, they are all making comments about Maurice," said Surin, who reached the semifinals here in what was likely his last worlds. "When you try to chase somebody like that, you cannot run your own race. Psychologically, it's too tough to win." Montgomery was doing just that. His false start was one of three before the race finally went off clean. "I heard the blocks move [on the false start]," said Montgomery. "I was tense at the start. I knew to beat Maurice you have to beat him at the start." With one strike against him, Montgomery was forced to sit back at the next gun. He was half a stride behind Greene after three steps and never made up the difference. "I got out of my drive with my head down and then came up and saw Maurice," Montgomery said. "I tried not to pay attention to Maurice, but I saw him and I said, Wow, that guy's up there, and I proceeded to go back down into my drive." Montgomery's kick was a game second effort, but not enough. "Those guys were in another race," said Williams. "We had two world championship finals, if you ask me." Greene is done for the week, but this one race made a big enough statement. Had he run without a searing hamstring, in cooler conditions and aided by a legal tailwind, he'd have annihilated his world record. As it was, the victory was more impressive than any time he could have posted. "You always have obstacles," Greene said after the race. "If it was easy, everyone would be out here doing it."
Sports Illustrated staff writer Brian Cazeneuve covers Olympic sports for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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