Gay Finds His Way Back in 200 Meters

NEW YORK, May 30 -- This meet figured to represent something small, the first step in what would surely be a long road to recovery for Tyson Gay, an almost tragic figure on last year's U.S. Olympic track and field team.

Gay, whose dreams of multiple Olympic medals were ruined first by an unfortunate injury and then an embarrassing dropped baton, on Saturday tackled his favorite race, the 200 meters, for the first time since last summer.

Gay didn't merely offer a respectable early-season effort. He didn't merely run without pain, or show hints of his former speed. As late-afternoon shadows crept across the Icahn Stadium track on Randall's Island, Gay ran faster than he has in his life and posted no less than the third-best time in history.

His finish in 19.58 seconds at the 2009 Reebok Grand Prix, trailing only Michael Johnson's 19.32 at the 1996 Olympics and Usain Bolt's 19.30 from the Summer Games last year.

Gay, 26, seemed to launch out of the starting blocks, flying around the curve so fast many in the crowd of 11,127 gasped. He said he "ran for his life" in the homestretch, crossing the finish four-tenths of a second ahead of Wallace Spearmon and .69 ahead of Xavier Carter, then pumped his right fist as the result flashed on the scoreboard.

"I was very surprised," Gay said. "It does a lot for my confidence. It's the third-fastest time in the world. . . . It was a goal to run 19-five, but it wasn't a goal to run it this early in the season."

He didn't set a time goal for this race, he said, and even if he had, he would never have set it so high. Gay's blistering time hinted that Bolt, a legend in his sport at 22, might not go unchallenged at the world championships in Berlin this August after all.

Bolt so thoroughly dominated the sprint events at last year's Olympics, and Gay fell so positively out of the picture, that even Gay didn't expect to creep into Bolt's rearview mirror so fast and so early in the season. But as Bolt bypassed this meet for a more lucrative competition with a less stellar field in Toronto in a couple of weeks, Gay came out and surely made the Jamaican megastar take a second look at the result, which came with a strong but legal tail wind of 1.3 meters per second. (Up to 2.0 is allowed.)

"He's probably excited," Gay said. "I'm sure he knows I'm a good curve runner. . . . That's going to be a benefit to him as well, having great competition."

The only race Gay had run since the Olympics was a 400 at the Texas Invitational in early May in which he ran an impressive but largely insignificant 45.57 seconds. Gay said he began speed training only a week ago after months of heavy training designed to build a strength base for the season.

It took Gay a while after last summer's Olympics to get his head around the idea of getting back on the track, let alone taking on Bolt. First he had to purge the whole summer's travails from his head. He had been running the fastest times of his life when he went down with a hamstring strain during a heat of the 200 at the Olympic trials.

The injury prevented him from competing in the 200, and he never got in shape to contend for the 100, failing to advance past the Olympic semifinals. Then he participated in the botched baton on a night the U.S. women's 4x100 relay team also mishandled the stick, ensuring that Bolt and his Jamaican teammates would be the world's most celebrated sprint stars.

"It was very difficult," Gay said. "The biggest part was getting over the four-by-one relay, not receiving a medal. It was hard to get it out of my mind. . . . I felt I let my country down, my state down, my family down . . . I kind of didn't want to be out a lot because I felt I let a lot of people down."

Gay had company in that regard. Fellow U.S. star Allyson Felix finished second in the 200 for the second straight Olympic Games to Jamaican Veronica Campbell-Brown, then took two months off to clear her head. She won Saturday's 400 in a world-leading 50.50 seconds, topping Jamaica's Shericka Williams's 50.58. Carmelita Jeter, who failed to make last year's Olympic team, won the 100 in a wind-aided 10.85, topping Muna Lee (10.88) and Campbell-Brown (10.91). Lauryn Williams, who finished fourth in the Olympics in the 100, won the 200 in a world-best 22.34.

Jenn Stuczynski, the reigning Olympic silver medalist, set a world-best mark in the pole vault, hitting 15 feet 9.25 inches.

Other Americans didn't flourish. Reston's Alan Webb, who stunningly failed to qualify for last year's Olympic team, finished 10th in Saturday's 1,500 in 3 minutes 42.58 seconds, well behind American Leonel Manzano, who won in 3:34.14. American Bernard Lagat, a double world champion who also failed to win a medal at last summer's Olympics, was outrun in the finish of the 5,000, finishing in 13:03.06, behind Kenya's Micah Kogo.

Gay said he would continue to run the 100 meters but likely would concentrate on only the 200 at the U.S. world championship trials in Eugene, Ore., in June. He said he has been training under longtime coach Lance Brauman in Clermont, Fla., going through the same workouts he always has.

Once he got back to his old routine, he said, he began to focus not just on chasing Bolt, but running him down.

"I hope" to run those times, Gay said. "I believe that's what it's going to take to win [the world championships]. He inspired me to work hard."