Powell's sights firmly set on gold »

Powell's sights firmly set on gold

Audley Boyd, Assistant Sport Editor

Usain Bolt and Asafa Powell hug after the 100m race at the national trials recently. - Ian Allen/Staff Photographer

HOW FAST must Asafa Powell run to win the Olympic gold medal in Beijing, China, next month?

"I have to go below 9.74 to win the gold," Powell said after a Gleaner-sponsored meeting with MVP track club and UTech athletes at the university on Tuesday.

He made the observation while noting that fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt has run 9.72, as he established a world record in New York on May 31.

Another of his main rivals, double World Championships sprint champion American Tyson Gay, ran 9.77 legally and 9.68 with a following wind of +4.1 metres per second (mps) at the United States Olympic trials at the weekend.

'Really want it'

This is the second Olympics for the 26-year-old Powell, who placed fifth in the final in Athens. And this time, his sights are firmly set on gold.

"I really want it. The Olympics are every four years. To get this Olympic gold medal, to win this gold, no one can challenge that. I've trained for that, it's the ultimate. You can run the world record any time - there are so many meets. The Olympics are every four years."

Powell held the world record for close to three years between June 2005 and May 31 of this year, having run 9.77 seconds thrice before lowering the standard to 9.74. He was forced to sit out nearly four months of competition this season due to shoulder surgery, from which he admits not to have fully recovered.

"I'm just finished doing the rehabilitation and have started doing the strengthening part," Powell said, adding that should take three weeks and allow him time to prepare full speed without hindrance.

The national trials this past weekend represented his second competition since surgery. He recorded 9.96 in winning a semi-final at the Trinidad and Tobago trials a week earlier. And he is pleased with his recovery thus far, which saw him clocking 9.90 in the heats of the trials on Friday.

"I was actually running with one hand," he says of Saturday's 9.97 seconds, second-place match sprint against Bolt for about 50m in the final. "I'm really surprised with how I performed. I was out for four months and did 9.90 cruising. I also went through the three rounds without injury, so I'm very happy.

"(A time of) 9.9 is something that I do running 20 metres and stop, so everybody should have seen that something was wrong," he admitted of that final.

No one doubts his speed. World records apart, Powell has run sub-10 seconds 36 times, bettered only by US sprinter Maurice Greene's 52. Powell is also the only man to run under 10 seconds 12 times in a season, and is one of two runners to have gone below 9.80 seconds twice or more. He has achieved that five times. The other is Bolt, with his two recent clockings.

Mental preparation

After finishing third in 9.96 behind Gay (9.85) and his cousin, Derrick Atkins (9.91), at last year's World Champs, Powell admitted he "panicked". So, his MVP camp has injected psychological sessions to shore up his mentality.

"The coach has put that (mental preparation) into our training schedule. We have one day in our training just for that now. Sherone (Simpson) is back, Brigitte (Foster-Hylton) is back in shape, I can go out there now and not focus on anybody," noted Powell, while pointing to the transformation of his world-class teammates who experienced uncharacteristic form slumps last season.

His coach, Stephen Francis, says mental preparation is necessary to get several of his runners over the hump.

"One of the things I discovered late in the game is we have a good record of transforming athletes who weren't very good as teenagers," noted Francis. "Given that that's the background of most of the athletes, they didn't know how to win, how to be champions, how to accommodate pressure.

"Even though they're physically better than people, some of them are afraid," he further explained. "Asafa is just getting used to the idea of being better than them."

Only time will tell.

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