Early morning in Lexington, Kentucky, and the new sensation of world sprinting is still comprehending the impact he has made on track and field. Six days earlier, Tyson Gay had completed a remarkable double when he won the 200m at the US championships in the second-fastest time in history, 48 hours after taking the 100m crown with another landmark performance, but he knows what people are thinking.

“The suspicion has fallen on me already,” he says. “I try to ignore it. But it makes me a bit more nervous now. I have been running track all my life and nobody has ever assumed I am on drugs, I have never heard rumours of me being on drugs. I ran through college fast, but now it is worse because of the quick times I am achieving at a professional level.”

Amid Gay’s success, the fallout remains from 12 months ago when it was discovered that his American teammate Justin Gatlin had been duping the sport. The Olympic champion and joint world record-holder tested positive for drugs and, barring an appeal that is yet to be heard, he is expected to be banned from the sport for eight years.

Gay has emerged from the shadows, as he puts it, to be touted as potentially one of the greatest sprinters of all time, just as Ato Boldon, Trinidad’s former world 200m champion, predicted he would. But now the hard part starts. He has to become accepted.

“I have a responsibility to the sport,” he says. “I will just be myself. I am hoping people will understand that the sport will become better. I am hoping that you can have a track meet without steroids being brought up. It seems that as long as people want to make money and want to be the best, there is always going to be somebody out there wanting to get the edge on the next competitor. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt until you test positive, but I was upset because Gatlin was American.

“It is logical that people are going to be suspicious. People are already assuming it is impossible that I am doing what I am. I just refocus my mind and double check that I do not put myself in the situation where people want to believe. I have been with the same coach for the past four to five years and he has never offered me anything. He stays away from that.”

Gay’s coaching situation makes his achievements all the more dramatic. Last November, Lance Brauman was jailed for 12 months for embezzlement. Brauman was found guilty of taking money from student funds, theft and mail fraud linked to paying athletes while he was a track coach in Kansas. As Gay was preparing for two of the biggest races of his career, he was using the training plans which had been devised by Brauman, 36, from his cell in Texas.

Gay insists that he has not lost faith in his coach. “Yes, it is an extraordinary situation,” he says. “Lance tries to call once a week. I have visited him two or three times. He calls, he writes, I write back. When I have been to see him, we have talked about training plans. We spent about three hours together. We talked about old times and about when he gets out.

“I have not lost any respect for him. He has probably done a lot of maturing while he has been locked up. I would hope when he comes out that the relationship with him will still be the same. He called me after the 200m last weekend, telling me that he watched the meeting on television. He was really happy.

“He said he knew I would run something in the 19.60s. He has planned out what I want to do in Europe when I go there. He still designs my training. But he cannot see how I feel.” The success of Gay is not a surprise, even though he was not expected to dominate both sprints at the US championships that doubled as the country’s trials for the world championships in Osaka next month. He ended last year as the world’s third-quickest sprinter at both the 100m and 200m, but in Indianapolis the testing conditions gave his performances even greater credence. His 100m time of 9.84sec matched that of 2006, but this time it was into a headwind. Only Maurice Greene, the 2000 Olympic champion and former world record-holder, had run quicker, with 9.80sec, against the elements. But it was his 200m performance that showed the quality of Gay.

He won in 19.62sec in an event where Xavier Carter and Wallace Spearmon were favourites and in the process put himself second behind Michael Johnson on the all-time rankings. It is nearly 11 years since Johnson won the Olympic title in Atlanta with his sensational 19.32sec, a race Gay watched but never imagined he would be looked upon as a successor to that title.

“I saw the race and watched tapes of it,” he said. “But I did not even think about running that fast. I just thought it was amazing how quick he had run. I did not even think about the record, or even coming close to it.”

It was not even Gay’s intention to make a career out of athletics, having first tried his hand at basketball before turning to athletics at high school. His breakthrough season on the world scene was 2005 when he finished fourth in the 200m at the world championships in Helsinki behind three teammates - Gatlin, Spearmon and John Capel - but now he is the dominant force.

His next race is in Lausanne on Tuesday week before he runs at the Norwich Union British Grand Prix in Sheffield a fortnight today. If he is to win the 100m at the world championships, it is likely he will have to beat Asafa Powell, the world record-holder who has run 9.77sec on three occasions.

One of those times was in Gateshead last summer, and Gay believes that Britain could be the stage for the mark to fall again because his plan is to lower it at the Don Valley Stadium. “If the weather conditions are right, I am going to give it my best,” said Gay. “I competed on the track in Sheffield in 2005 in the 200m and ran 20.0. I didn’t even run at full speed.”

Gay has run wind-assisted times of 9.76sec and 9.79sec for the 100m this year, and it is the support he is receiving from the likes of Boldon which is only adding to his stature. “When I hear Ato Boldon saying I’m going to be the fastest man on the planet it makes me feel good because he ran with Maurice Greene, who is the greatest of all time,” said Gay. “He is the first sprinter in history who had a start, a middle and an end.

“I appreciate John Smith, Greene’s coach, giving me compliments also. But I’m just a normal guy and I can’t really believe that these things are being said.”

Powell remains the target. The Jamaican has yet to win a global championship and now he has a new rival who is fresh and has been called “quiet but deadly”.

As Gay says: “I want to win. That means more to me than times. Fast times will come if I carry on winning. I feel very good about my victories last weekend. I have been working on my start, which worked well in the 200m. It was one of the last races of the meeting, I was a little fatigued, so I was delighted with the time I ran.

“The 200m was a little more satisfying than the 100m because I was in the shadows behind Walter Dix and Wallace Spearmon. I really felt that I had something to show them.”

He did that. Spearmon was second in 19.89sec behind training partner Gay at the championships and Dix did not start the 200m. The sprints were about just one man and now the greater challenges lie ahead. But Tyson Gay aims to achieve them the proper way.

World’s fastest men

Five fastest 100m runs 9.77sec A Powell (Jam) 2005 9.77sec J Gatlin (US) 2006 9.77sec A Powell (Jam) 2006 9.77sec A Powell (Jam) 2006 9.79sec M Greene (US) 1999

Five fastest 200m runs 19.32sec M Johnson (US) 1996 19.62sec T Gay (US) 2007 19.63sec X Carter (US) 2006 19.65sec W Spearmon (US) 2006 19.66sec M Johnson (US) 1996