Powell: I will smash my own world record

SPRINTER Asafa Powell has confidently predicted he will beat his 100 metres world record and become the first person to clock under 9.70 seconds.

The 24-year-old Jamaican ran a blistering time of 9.74secs at the IAAF Grand Prix in Rieti on Sunday, beating by 0.03secs the previous record he shared with American Justin Gatlin.

“I love this track, it’s very fast and bouncy,” said Powell after his phenomenal performance in his heat and an equally-impressive winning time of 9.78secs in the final.

Statisticians who watched the qualifier insist if he had not slowed 15 metres from the finishing line, he would have almost certainly produced a mark of 9.72secs.

Powell is convinced he can go much faster.

“This means that I can do even 9.68secs, I’m worth that time, I know it,” said Powell, whose victory partially made up for the disappointment of finishing third at the World Championships, won by USA number one Tyson Gay.

“Today I ran like I should have done at the Worlds,” he said. “In Osaka I was too tense, I was thinking about the race and the time I had to set. Here I was relaxed.”

That seems to be the story of Powell’s championship history, where in the last few years he has struggled to stay calm when the pressure builds up.

The 2003 World Championships saw him disqualified for false starting in his semi final. At the 2004 Olympic Games he was hot favourite to lift the gold medal and had looked comfortable throughout his qualifiers.

But he could not match the speed of Gatlin, Francis Obikwelu and Maurice Greene, slumping to fifth and a metre off the gold medallist’s pace.

Powell was injured for the 2005 World Championships and, although he won last year’s Commonwealth Games title, questions remain about his ability to cope with pressure.

In contrast, at the one day IAAF Golden League and Grand Prix meetings, Powell has shown what a fierce competitor he is, setting the previous world record figure of 9.77secs three times in the last two years. Gatlin also equalled the world record in Doha last year, but if his plea to an arbitration panel is rejected for an anti-doping offence, he is unlikely to return to action and his world record will certainly be annulled by the IAAF.

Gatlin’s absence gives Powell an ascendancy even Tyson Gay — who thrashed him in Osaka — has not managed to match in terms of times. With Gay nursing a sore hamstring, they are very unlikely to go head-to-head in Brussels this Friday at the Ivo Van Damme Memorial meeting.

That will leave Powell in his speciality 100m race, racing against the clock, something he genuinely thrives upon.