Simon Barnes's Olympic blog

The film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly climaxes with a three-way shoot-out between the adjectivised main characters. Not a duel but a triello. Today, with a bit of luck, we shall be watching another triello as the men’s 100 metres comes to its equally smouldering climax.

These days we are all a little reluctant to make claims for the goodness of sprinters. There have been too many bad and too many ugly over recent years, marring the actuality or the memory of three of the past five Olympic Games. But drugs or no drugs, there is no doubting the power of the spectacle of three men setting their wills against each other, knowing that, for the winner, the prize is the supreme moment of his life.

It began yesterday in unexpected blessed sunshine and Usain Bolt slouched to his mark to begin. He has that marvellous “what the hell’s worry supposed to be” air that is something of a Jamaican speciality. Nothing fussed him, not even the apparently rather unexpected detonation of the starting pistol.

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He is a massive man — 6ft 5in — and he looks more a fast bowler than a runner. He used to be one and he would have been fearsome to face, even if he never let go of the ball. Village green cricketers are always talking of ferocious fast bowlers who “run up quicker than they bowl”. Bolt must have been the prime example, but if he never properly mastered the art of bowling — some say that he was a bit of a chucker — he got the running part pretty well right.

He was in the first heat and he set the tone with an almost insolent nonchalance. The Jamaicans have been kitted out with a sort of après-beach vest, rather than a spray-on Superman outfit, and it suited Bolt’s sloppy ease of manner to perfection. The gun went. Mildly surprised, he eased himself to his feet and jogged down the track to the tape.

Well, perhaps he loped. Certainly he was in no itchin’ hurry. All the same, he got there ahead of everybody else and in 10.2sec. What would he do if was actually bothered? He’s not the fastest of starters because there’s an awful lot of him to get standing up and moving forward, but once he’s up, there’s no catching him.

He needs only 41 paces to get from one end of the straight to the other, he is the world record-holder at 9.72 and if anyone lets him get ahead, they’re not going to pass him. He doesn’t even think the 100 metres is his best event.

Asafa Powell, the second Jamaican, was second up, shaven-head, more consciously the star, more self-assertively the superman. He ran a little faster, slowing up with easy confidence.

The third participant in the triello was Tyson Gay, of the United States, looking distinctly edgy. Mind you, Buddha would look twitchy standing next to Bolt. Gay’s first run hummed with effort, with neuroses. But sprinting is a weird event; neuroses can be as helpful as calm. It’s all in the way these things take you.

The evening session for the places in the semi-finals changed the nature of the triello. Gay could manage only second in his heat and he didn’t look like a man easing up. He pulled a hamstring in those always ferocious US Olympic trials a few weeks back and pulled out of the 200 metres. He still looked bothered yesterday. “I felt good and relaxed,” he said, but I suspect him of lying.

Powell ran 10.02 easing up, in full control, but the evening was effortlessly — and I pick the word with care — stolen by Bolt. He ran 9.92 and he hurried only the first 50 metres. After that he was looking about in mild interest at the scene around him. It was an utterly outrageous piece of running.