News - 21.07.2010

Monaco Poster boy Gay ready to live up to his billing - Samsung Diamond League

Tyson Gay (USA)
21 July 2010 – Monaco - By his own admission, Tyson Gay had a big surprise this week as he drove into Monte Carlo ahead of tomorrow’s Heculis 2010 Samsung Diamond League meeting. Everywhere he looked, posters advertising the event, with himself as the poster boy.

“It was a complete shock to me,” he says. “At last year’s World Championships in Berlin there were posters of myself and Usain Bolt.  But this was my first time, coming in on the taxi from the airport, seeing all the poster hanging up...it’s cool.”

But while Gay is the main attraction in what will be his final 200 metres of the season before concentrating on the shorter sprint, it emerged that his main rival Walter Dix, who beat him over the distance at the Eugene Diamond League meeting, would not be there to contend with him.

According to meet organiser Jean-Pierre Schoebel, Dix has withdrawn “for financial reasons.”

The announcement takes a little wind out of Gay’s sails – without altering his main strategy for the day.

“I plan to run the same way whether he is in the race or not,” he says. “It would have been a bit more interesting if he had been there – we are both similar style runners so it would have been more exciting coming to the end. But it doesn’t really change a lot.”

He acknowledges, however, that the narrow defeat in Eugene is something he carries with him.

 “Without a doubt,” he says. “I’m a competitor and I want to beat the best, and right now I can’t say Dix is the best, but right now he’s on top. Usain Bolt has the fastest time of the year but Dix has run the most 200s and I think he’s only had one loss, so I want to beat him because he’s a great competitor."

While Gay’s second race of the season saw him beat that other great competitor, Asafa Powell, over 100m in the Gateshead Diamond League meeting, the big question remains: can he beat Bolt?

“I don’t want to elaborate on it too much,” he says. “We’ll face each other in a couple of weeks in Stockholm – Usain, myself and Asafa Powell.”

So had he altered his opinion given before the Gateshead meeting that Powell, rather than Bolt, was the man to beat?

“A win is a win,” he says. “At the same time I had to dip to beat Asafa. I’m not taking anything away from him. He’s still sharp, he’s still fit.  I think he had a few niggles from his last race. But him and Bolt, they are the men to beat. They are on top right now. There’s no other way to look at it.

“I feel good. I want to run fast. I’m about 90 per cent. But I’m healthy.

“I think I have some good competition. I just want to focus on people who are behind me tomorrow. Because at the Prefontaine meeting when I lost it was someone who was behind me, so I have to be aware of all my competitors.
“I want to run faster than I did in Eugene, which was 19.76.”

Gay said before the Gateshead race “It will tell me where I’m at.” So where is that?

“It told me that my muscle memory is still there,” he says. “Because I wasn’t expecting my start to be that good, and it wasn’t really that good, but it was good enough for my first race.

“Psychologically I know Asafa has run some fast times this year and it let me know that I am capable of running some fast times as well.”

And looking at the overview of Jamaican domination in the sprints, Gay made it clear that he and his fellow countrymen are working to reverse the standing order.

“I just think it’s good competition for the sport,” he says. “The Americans have been on top for years, and you could say the Jamaicans have been on top for the last two years. It pushes a lot of us to work harder because Americans do have pride as well. When we represent American we want to be victorious.”

Another American victory looks most likely in the longer sprint today.

Mike Rowbottom for the IAAF