In what could be termed the duel in the crown of the domestic season, Tyson Gay and Asafa Powell have agreed to a pre-Olympic showdown in Crystal Palace. It is a meeting between a man who helped himself to a bucketful of medals at last year's World Championships and the world record-holder damned with not having the bottle for the battle.

The meeting is a coup for the Aviva London Grand Prix on July 25 and 26 and a boost to a sport that is being dragged through the mud and the courts. The irony is that, with Usain Bolt, Powell's fellow Jamaican, running 9.76sec for the 100metres this year, the sport is in rude health on the track while suffering a savaging off it.

“I don't really worry about the drug accusations and people making assumptions,” Gay said. “It doesn't matter to me if someone next to me is doing something. I still need to have the confidence that I can beat him.”

Powell sounded more irritated by the spectre of suspicion. “It's not my fault that people are saying that if someone runs very fast they must be on drugs, but it's making it bad for us athletes,” he said.

Gay, 27, has signed up to Project Believe, an American programme in which athletes volunteer for extra drug-testing to prove that they are clean. Another scandal to go with those emanating from the Balco bust and the Trevor Graham trial would be the last nail in the credibility coffin.

However, the duel has the makings of a restorative rivalry. Gay is the quietly spoken star who won three gold medals at last summer's World Championships, despite his coach, Lance Brauman, being in the Federal Correctional Institute in Texarkana, Texas, at the time for theft, embezzlement and fraud. His fastest official time is 9.84, but he has run 9.76 wind-assisted.

Powell, also 27, is the master of running sub-10, but his speed has come with caveats about his ability to produce on the big stage. “I wasn't thinking about Tyson Gay,” he said of his third place at the World Championships. “I was thinking about the gold medal and all the glory afterwards. That's what I did wrong. I started thinking about the outcome instead of focusing on what I needed to do.”

The pressure, however, is on and, although the defeat in Osaka was the first time he had been beaten by Gay, Powell has more to gain from their race in London. “People say that I can't deliver, but if I got a gold medal they would stop talking,” he said. “I am carrying the weight of the whole country on my shoulders and I want to cross that line first, so I can put down all that weight.”

The pair were scheduled to meet in the Golden League in Brussels last September, but Gay withdrew through tiredness. They were then due to meet at the Mt SAC relays in California last month, but Powell pulled a pectoral muscle. He will not run until the Jamaican trials at the end of June. “Everything is going the way it should,” he said. “I'm back in training and confident in my coach.”

Powell's season started in calamitous fashion when he cut a knee rushing to training. He then missed his flight to a race in Melbourne and lost his luggage, although the time he posted, 10.4, was quicker than Gay has managed this season.

Both men had kind words to say about the British sprinters. “Craig Pickering is very young and he should be up there with the other guys - he just needs to focus and think about what he's doing,” Powell said. “I am also looking for big things from Marlon Devonish this year at the Olympics.”

Devonish begins his season at the FBK Games in Hengelo, in the Netherlands, today and believes that he can dip below the magical 10-second barrier in 2008. “I try not to think about it, but I ran 10.06 last year and that's one small step. My aim is to make the Olympic final and when you're there anything can happen,” he said.

Having trained in Spain with Francis Obikwelu, the Portugal sprinter, Devonish believes that he is stronger than last year. He also plans to run in the first Golden League meeting of the year in Berlin a week tomorrow.