Athletics - Mens 100m v World Record

4 June 2008

Preview By Tipster CYellow (England)

2008 - Is this the Year?

Mens 100m world record to be broken?

Expekt have released a series of "will it happen in 2008" specials one or two of which have really caught my eye.

The first of these is "2008 - Is this the Year?

Mens 100m world record to be broken" with odds of 3.0 that it will.

I believe this represents a fair bit of value and here is why.

There are 2 men capable of breaking the existing WR on 9.74s Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay. The 2 great sprinters went head to head last year in the world championship final with Gay taking the win whilst Asafa Powell once again failed on the big stage. A few weeks later Powell broke the WR and is the exisiting WR holder.

Lets take a closer look at the 2 men starting with Tyson Gay.

Gay won 3 gold medals at the world championships in a time of 9.85s into a 0.5m/s headwind. He also ran 9.84s into a 0.5 m/s headwind at the US trials. 2008 is Olympic year and so Gay will have to qualify for the US team in the trials. This represents one of the races we can expect Gay to run very quickly. He will be motivated to add to his world champs haul and also will want to prove beyond all doubt he is the #1 sprinter in the world.

He is clearly capable of running 9.7x with favourable conditions.

Asafa Powell meanwhile is in my opinion the faster sprinter in the world but just lacks a bit of bottle in the big races. He has run under 10 seconds 33 times and has more 9.7x times than anyone in the history of athletics with 5, no-one else has more than 1.

It is his WR i think will be broken. When he broke that WR it was in a qualifying race at a grand prix meet in Italy. If you watch the race you will see him ease up to save himself for the final. He ran possibly even faster in that final but with the wind not so kind couldnt quite beat his time from the heats.

Now 2008 is a big year for Asafa Powell. He has to get the "choker" monkey off his back. No better year for that than an Olympic year then!

The WR could go very early in the year as times are often fast at the start of the season, then it'll go quite as they look to peak for the Olympics and expect some fast times shortly after with their peak conditioning in their legs for 2-3 weeks afterwards. It is no coincidence Powell smashed the WR a few weeks after the world championships in 2007.

So we have 2 world class athletes both capable of breaking the WR running in Olympic year and we can have 3.0 that one of them breaks the WR? That'll do for me. If i was laying this bet i would be laying around the 1.91 mark.