Timing mistake costs ex-Vol world record in 100 meters
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And while their first chance to end the newly discovered stalemate will come sooner than expected, it won?t feature the ?world?s fastest men? running side-by-side.
Because of a timing error, it turns out that Olympic champion Gatlin didn?t break the world 100-meter mark last weekend after all; he merely tied Jamaican rival Powell, who set it at 9.77 seconds last year.
They?ll both participate May 28 at Hayward Field in Eugene, Ore. ? just not in the same race. Both will run 100 meters at the Prefontaine Classic, but the event will be divided into two eight-man fields, with Gatlin in one and Powell in the other, meet promoter Tom Jordan told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
That creates the intriguing possibility of one of the sprinters watching in person while the other breaks the world record, or even one record-breaking race followed by another.
?It does kind of whet the appetite,? Jordan said.
The two can?t race against each other, Jordan said, because they are contractually obligated ? for a high fee ? to a match race June 11 at the Norwich British Union Grand Prix in Gateshead, England.
Powell, in a telephone interview from his home in Linstead in northeastern Jamaica, declined to comment on the timing mishap, but said he is ready to race against Gatlin. The two last raced in the 100 at the Prefontaine last June, with Gatlin narrowly winning in 9.84.
?You can look for Asafa Powell not playing around anymore because I played around last year and he beat me one time,? Powell said. ?I?m just going to out there and go all out.
?I?ll definitely be at Gateshead, so he knows where to find me.?
Gatlin, the 24-year-old American who won the Olympic 100-meter gold medal in Athens and is the reigning 100- and 200-meter world champion, was told he had broken the record with a 9.76-second clocking under the lights in Doha, Qatar, last Friday night.
But the sport?s governing body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, announced Wednesday that Gatlin was clocked in 9.766 seconds, and the official reading should manually have been rounded up to 9.77. That matches Powell?s record set in Athens, Greece, on June 14, 2005.
Under IAAF rules, a time is always rounded up to the next one-hundredth of a second. The federation said it acted after being informed of the error by Tissot Timing, the Swiss company in charge of the recording the times at the Doha event.
?As a sport, it?s embarrassing,? said Craig Masback, executive director of USA Track & Field, ?and I feel badly for Justin.?
It?s believed to be the first time a world record has been taken away days later because of a timing adjustment. Gatlin didn?t grant interviews Wednesday, but a statement he released through USA Track & Field showed he was perturbed that it took so long to get it right.
?It is very disappointing to me that it has taken five days to determine the official time of a race with this significance,? he said. ?I remain confident that I am the world?s fastest man and I look forward to proving it once again. My parents raised me to be a good sport, but I don?t want to share the world record.?