Running against the tide

An American woman has only won the 400m once at the Olympics, at Los Angeles during the Soviet-led boycott.

An American woman has only won the 400m once at the Olympics, at Los Angeles during the Soviet-led boycott. Sanya Richards is a favourite to claim that gold once again for the United States. Her final is on the 19th, perhaps a moment she has been visualising for years, and she says she is anxious to get started.

Kingston-born Richards8217;s is a story of overcoming personal odds. Last year she found herself out of contention in competition after symptoms of Behcet8217;s Disease, an inflammatory syndrome, were first misdiagnosed and then for a while mistreated. During the worst of it, she says, her mouth ulcers and skin lesions were so acute that she8217;d write notes because talking was so painful. She would wake up in the middle of the night imagining someone was patting a hot iron on her body.

A year later she is ranked world number one in the women8217;s 400m, the race that combines the raw power of the 100m and 200m sprints and the clever thinking needed to master the middle distances.

These are the kind of stories that humanise the statistics at this Olympics: American Eric Shanteau8217;s decision to postpone a cancer surgery for the chance to swim the 200m breaststroke he was eliminated in the semi-final on Wednesday. South African Natalie du Toit8217;s participation in 10 km open water race, making her the first amputee to swim at the Olympics.

But it is a reflection of the disrepute that has come to track and field that when Richards meets reporters on a wet and grey Thursday afternoon, she is asked about the state of athletics, about what can be done to redeem confidence in sprinters.

Track and field, beginning here in Beijing on Friday, traditionally provides the marquee events at the Summer Olympics. This time there is extreme suspicion, and even a sense of betrayal. The 100m race, athletics8217; most visceral race, is a junkyard of shattered reputations. The defending champion, Justin Gatlin, cannot be here. He is serving out a ban after testing positive for testosterone two years ago. Last year Marion Jones had her Sydney 2000 gold medal taken away on confirmation of drug abuse.

With the detection of yet more previously unknown substances, athletes now have to give blood samples to be frozen, so that they could be checked in the future with new diagnostic procedures. Jamaican Asafa Powell says he has given so much blood since arriving in Beijing that it could leave him weak for the 100m final on Saturday night.

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Powell exaggerates. But along with fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt and American Tyson Gay, he completes the fastest threesome in the history of sprint. They come to the race with formidable form. Powell8217;s 2007 world record 9.74 seconds was broken by Bolt this summer, and at the American trials Gay ran the fastest, but wind-aided and therefore unofficial, time in history, 9.68 seconds.

There is nothing to suggest that the threesome is not 8220;clean8221;. But in a race that had its last hero in Carl Lewis, there is a reluctance to be won over by a victor. The 100m is a race in need of redemption, and it will take more than the assembly of three very fast men to recover confidence in its practitioners.

That is perhaps why Sanya Richards suggests that other countries adopt the British practice of banning for life athletes found guilty of doping. This summer the courts refused to overturn British sprinter Dwain Chambers8217;s life ban. But she pleads on behalf of the athletes in Beijing being asked to make amends for their predecessors: 8220;It the disrepute brought upon athletics by doping is not our burden to bear. There8217;s so much weight we can put on ourselves. The baggage to change is too heavy a burden to carry.8221;

The romance of the moment is too overpowering, it cannot be annihilated by doubt. So, when Richards argues thus, you want to believe her, you know that no matter how many dopers are revealed in coming years, you will want to thrill at the achievement of a champion. 8220;We8217;re at the best event in the quadrennial calendar,8221; she exclaims. 8220;I don8217;t want to hear about drugs.8221; No, we don8217;t. And hopefully we will not.