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World's best ready to run
Five questions to ponder on the eve of the track and field world championships in Edmonton, Alberta: 1) How big is the Yegorova Affair? Huge. To review: Olga Yegorova, a 29-year-old Russian, knocked one minute off her personal best for 5,000 meters (15:42 to 14:42) between 1997 and 2000; this year, she lopped 10 seconds off her best for 3,000 meters and beat Romania's Gabriela Szabo to win the world indoor title. After a July 6 meet in Paris, Yegorova's 'A' urine sample tested positive for EPO. The only shock was that she got caught. Now there is a "problem" with her 'B' sample which might not be resolved in time to suspend her from next Thursday's opening round in the women's 5,000. If she runs, it's an immeasurable embarrassment for a sport that is constantly fighting drug innuendo. Szabo has said she'll boycott the race if Yegorova competes, which is rich, because she's been the subject of whispered drug rumors for half a decade. Still, it's one thing to let suspect athletes run and quite another to let guilty ones compete. 2) Would the U.S. coaches really keep Marion Jones off the women's 4x100-meter relay? The United States? Relays? Stranger things have happened. Jones, the biggest name in American track and field (at least now that high school miler Alan Webb is lying low, getting ready for college), didn't attend a "mandatory" relay camp last month in Monaco. This broke some noses, as it always does. Even the iconoclastic HSI bunch ( Maurice Greene, Inger Miller, et al.) went to the camp en masse. U.S. women's team coach J.J. Clark ( Joetta's bro, Jearl Miles-Clark's hubby) has been noncommittal, which seems political on his part, designed not to tick off the USA Track & Field bigwigs by knuckling under to a star (don't want to make the stars too happy, do we?). It's a no-brainer. Jones wants to run? She runs. End of story. After a few more days of posturing, expect Clark to reach the same conclusion, provided Jones comes through the 100 and 200 in one piece. 3) Can Tim Montgomery really keep Maurice Greene from winning his third straight 100-meter world title? Maybe, maybe not. This much is certain: Greene's left knee is bothering him more than just a little bit. Thursday morning he powered through starts but limped around afterward. "If I'm on the line, no excuses,'' he said following his workout, but that's because he's a tough guy. Mo is vulnerable, no question. This much is also certain: Montgomery, a solid runner who before this year had never gone faster than 9.92 seconds and had never threatened Greene with anything big on the line, is making way too much of the 9.84 he ran July 13 in Oslo, with a 2.0-meters-per-second tailwind, the max allowed. Ato Boldon, Greene's training partner who finished second to Montgomery that night, said Thursday, "[Montgomery] thinks that was like all my 9.86s and Maurice's 9.80 and he's wrong." Still, Montgomery has been training well and it's nice to have a nemesis for Greene. I would not, however, bet against Greene in a big race. 4) Is Haile Gebrselassie finished or can he win a fifth 10,000-meter title just from memory? His training hasn't been great. He hasn't run a race of any significance this season. Yet he's going to the line for the first round of the 10,000 Sunday and, presumably, for Wednesday's final. Geb twice previously has started a season with a world record, although not nearly as late as August. He's been injured for long parts of the last three years, which is why he hasn't yet run a marathon. However, anybody who saw him win the Olympic gold last September cannot discount him here. The guy is hugely game. He's also got to be seriously happy that Paul Tergat is running marathons and won't be alongside him with 200 to run. Give Gebrselassie a great chance, but he's no lock. 5) Will this event decide ... drum roll ... the Future of Track and Field in North America? That's the phrase magpies have been throwing around for the last few months. Please. The hugely successful Atlanta Olympics were followed by a terrible '97 and '98, saved in the U.S. only by the emergence of Greene and Jones. If these championships are well-attended and entertaining, it means there's a core audience for track. If they're a bust, it means we're in bloody Edmonton, with no certifiable Canadian superstars (save for high jumper Mark Boswell, and that event is wide open, as always, in the post- Javier Sotomayor years). What's more, the IAAF won't be bringing the worlds back to North America until at least 2011. And in case anybody on the IAAF Council surfs CNNSI.com, Stanford, Calif., would have been a way better location than Edmonton. Sports Illustrated senior writer Tim Layden covers track and field for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Check back daily for more reports from Edmonton.
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