American sprinter Shaun Crawford outshone the big guns on Saturday as he timed a comfortable 10.02sec in the first round of the men's Olympic 100 metres.
The other two Americans, Olympic champion Maurice Greene and Justin Gatlin were easy winners while the Caribbean laid down their challenge through Jamaica's Asafa Powell and world champion Kim Collins of St Kitts and Nevis.
There was also victory for four-time Olympic silver medallist Frankie Fredericks but there was only misery and humiliation for another nearly man of the Games as Ato Boldon crashed out on the track where the Trinidadian won the world 200m title in 1997.
Another major scalp of the first round was Britain's world 100m bronze and Olympic 200m silver medallist Darren Campbell, who finished fourth and was not fast enough to qualify as a fastest loser.
Crawford and Gatlin were hugely impressive with the former likely to be the first athlete to win his heat sporting a cap.
"That is the first time I have ever worn a cap in a race," said the 26-year-old.
"I just wanted to keep the sun off my neck and stop the engine overheating."
Gatlin, who is Crawford's training partner and coached by the controversial Trevor Graham, boasted that he had just been out for a mid-morning jog.
"That is the easiest 10sec plus race of my life and in the end I was slowing down," said the 22-year-old, who failed a drugs test in 2001 after he won the 100m, 200m and 110m hurdles at the US junior championships.
Greene was less fluent but eventually got the better of the lumbering Jamaican Dwight Thomas and then laid into his American team-mates.
"I couldn't care less what the others are doing," said 30-year-old Greene who won his first world title here in 1997 and then broke the world record in 1999 on the same track.
Fredericks, running in probably his last major championships, breezed through his heat seeing off Campbell, who could finish only fourth.
"It's not about age it's about the Olympic Games," said the 36-year-old Fredericks.
"And whether if you win gold or not it is nice for the Namibian people to see someone of their own running."
Campbell's compatriot Mark Lewis-Francis did rather better winning his heat which saw the first disqualification in the sprints for a false start by Trinidad's 2002 world silver medallist Marc Burns.
However, bad Burns felt it was nothing compared to his team-mate Boldon, who collected two Olympic silvers and two bronzes, and the 30-year-old accepted that his time was up at the top table. "This is the last time I am going to do this," said Boldon.
Comments
Comments are closed.