Just sitting by the track and watching the men’s sprint final at a major championship during the 1990s felt like going into a tackle with an up-for-it Marcel Desailly.
When Linford Christie, Leroy Burrell or Maurice Greene got their massive frames rolling, the very foundations of the stadium seemed to quiver and shake. Last week in Paris, Kim Collins changed all that.
In a photograph taken from the side of the track near the finish of the 100m final in the Stade de France, Collins is barely visible.
Way out in lane one, stretching for the line in the all-black costume he says he chose to reflect his status as the event’s dark horse, he looks like a figure from a famine-relief poster in comparison with the other runners, whose bulging muscles strain beneath the skin of their shoulders and thighs.
‘I don’t do weights, I don’t pump iron,†Collins said afterwards. ‘I don’t take protein supplements or vitamins. I don’t believe in that. I use my natural speed.†He stands a mere 1,73m tall and weighs only 63kg. He appears to have no more musculature than British supermodel Kate Moss.
In a world of wildebeests, he is a gazelle who runs without noise, without friction, almost without disturbing the air around him. But that ‘natural speed†was enough to take him to the next stage of a progression that began in 1996 in Atlanta, when, at the age of 20, he reached the Olympic quarterfinals.
Four years later he was barely noticed as he finished seventh in Sydney. But the following year, when he shared the bronze medal in Edmonton behind Greene and Tim Montgomery, the actual and future world-record holder, there was a quiet smile on his face as he explained to those who had never heard of St Kitts and Nevis that his native islands were situated in the Caribbean and had a combined population of no more than 40 000.
That quiet smile was still there last season, when he destroyed Britain’s bright hopes in the Commonwealth Games. And it was there again this week, when he was officially anointed world champion.
He doesn’t like to make a fuss. ‘You have to find a way of getting up for the game,†he said before the Paris championships. ‘I have to be cool and relaxed. I can’t be stressed. Talking can’t help you. In any case, I haven’t done anything to talk about yet.â€
He has now, and St Kitts will be bursting with pride. After his win in Manchester they put his likeness on a postage stamp, gave his name to a boulevard (on an island that has only one set of traffic lights), presented him with a three-bedroom house worth £100 000 and awarded him a diplomatic passport, allowing him to pass untroubled through the world’s frontiers. After this, presumably, the presidency is on the cards.
So what does it mean that Collins’s run this week was the first time the 100m world championship had been won in a time above 10 seconds since Carl Lewis’s victory in 1983? Have standards fallen, or might there be some other reason?
The French believe that their reputation for rigorous drug-testing, prompted by the government in the wake of the Festina scandal, has persuaded athletes in all disciplines not to take chances this year. As a result, they believe performances have returned to more credible levels.
Nor, it might be added, is the air of Saint-Denis filled with complaints from the distance runners about a track designed to suit sprinters, with an unusually hard surface that absorbed little energy but was hard on the legs of anyone called up to run more than a couple of laps. That was certainly the mood in Edmonton two years ago when Greene crossed the line in 9,82 seconds.
Perhaps a 100m competition in which no one breaks 10 seconds lacks glamour. But glamour is not the point of all this. Kim Collins’s unassuming nature is a credit to his island. And his ‘natural speed†might just have an even bigger future. —