ATHLETICS: Shortly after they crossed the line, with the Nagai Stadium in a mild state of shock, a Japanese commenter was overheard saying, "and the champion becomes Gay." Presumably nothing there was lost in translation, but either way Tyson Gay has fast become one of the biggest names in world athletics.
That the latest race to decide the fastest man on earth went to the 24-year-old American, who had run the quickest time this year, wasn't entirely unexpected. The big surprise was the way in which he beat Jamaica's world-record holder Asafa Powell, easily gunning him down in the final 20 metres to take the world title - and his first individual championship medal - in a sweet 9.85 seconds.
Judging on the earlier rounds, and especially the semi-finals, Powell was the man to beat, and might possibly even test his 9.77 world record. Instead he tied up badly, not just surrendering his winning advantage to Gay but also allowing Derrick Atkins of the Bahamas to ease past and take silver in a national record of 9.91.
Powell clocked 9.96, the look of disgust all over his face. After crumbling in the Olympic final three years ago and missing the last World Championships with injury he's fast establishing a reputation of blowing the big occasion, not the kind of thing an athlete wants going into another Olympic year. "I was ready to go," said Powell, "but I made a couple of mistakes. My blocks stumbled and I couldn't accelerate as well. I didn't feel too much pressure but when I started to realise that Tyson was coming things were beginning to go bad for me."
Tyson came alright - with the ferocity of an express train. Once he passed Powell the race was clearly his, the power from the hips and stretching of arms quite incredible.
"Today I was a little bit nervous," said Gay in the thick, southern drawl of his native Kentucky. "But I just stayed relaxed and believed in my top speed, even though I had a bad start, and Asafa was in front of me. After 60 metres I saw that I could catch him - and it worked. The gold medal feels so good and I am very proud of it."
There's every reason to believe Gay will add 200-metre gold later in the week, and another relay gold to go with it. Some doubters of his legitimacy are inevitable, given the previous champion, his compatriot Justin Gatlin, is currently out on a drugs ban, but for what it's worth Gay presents himself with a refreshing grace and humility. Only tomorrow, however, will he get to share his experience with his coach Lance Brauman, when Brauman finishes a jail sentence for embezzling student funds. But everything else about Tyson's background looks trustworthy.
Irish expectations been revised upwards after the opening days of competition. Two finalists in the same event, a casual-looking semi-final qualification for another, topped off by Robert Heffernan's superb sixth-place finish in the 20km walk set that exciting trend. Róisín McGettigan and Fionnuala Britton go in today's 3,000-metre steeplechase final, and Joanne Cuddihy follows in the 400-metre semi-finals, unfortunately for her against a very difficult line-up.
They'll be inspired by Heffernan's performance in the brutal heat of Osaka early yesterday morning. Inside the final two kilometres he was within a shout of a medal, holding fifth place. But his problem was twofold: he'd just picked up his second warning (three strikes and you're out), and two of the world's absolute best were in front of him - Ecuador's two-time defending champion Jefferson Perez and Spain's two-time silver medallist Javier "Paco" Fernandez, now Heffernan's training partner.
The urge to start lifting - or "sprinting" - can prove irresistible at that stage. In fact, for Fernandez it did, and while Perez entered the stadium first to win his third straight gold medal in 1:22:20, the Spaniard was initially disqualified for apparently sprinting past the Tunisian Hatem Ghoula in the final metres, the difference between silver and bronze. Only later, following a lengthy appeal, was Fernandez reinstated.
