Athletics: Belief brings Chambers his Greene dream

Simon Turnbull
Saturday 29 June 2002 19:00 EDT
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Last Sunday, as Dwain Chambers sat in the steeplechase water-jump at the Parc des Sports in Annecy, with the European Cup in one hand and a Union Jack in the other, it was suggested that Britannia's track and field team captain ruled the waves. "Britannia rules the waves?" he pondered, chuckling. "That's good, man. That's good."

One week later, Britannia's fastest is ruling the sprint lanes – for the time being, at least. Before he settles into his starting blocks at the Don Valley Stadium in Sheffield this afternoon, Chambers will have the European Cup in his hands again, parading with the rest of Britain's Annecy heroes at the start of the Norwich Union Classic. He will also be clutching the scalp of the world's fastest man – strictly in the metaphorical sense, of course.

The Belgrave Harrier's victory in the 100m at the Bislett Games in Oslo on Friday night was not his first against Maurice Greene. In July 2000 he was one of four men who finished ahead of the jet-lagged world record holder in the GB v USA match on a windswept day in Glasgow. He beat Greene again on a cold, wet afternoon at Gateshead the following month, in the Norwich Union Classic of 2000. His win on Friday, though, was by far his most significant against the American who has been the world's No 1 100m man for five years.

It was Greene's first defeat since May last year, when he finished third behind Patrick Jarrett and Tim Montgomery in Eugene – after hesitating when Jarrett had got off to what the reaction times confirmed was a flying start. It was also Chambers' first victory against Greene on the mainstream European circuit, in one of the Golden League meetings.

"I'll take a lot of confidence from this," he said. "I know I have to achieve this year after a couple of years when I've stood still. I really do believe in myself now. I'm getting where I want to be."

Where Chambers wants to be is ahead of Greene in the race for world championship and Olympic gold. In the absence of a global championship this summer, he will have to settle for challenging the world and Olympic champion on the European circuit (and possibly at the World Cup in Madrid in September too) while attempting to add the Commonwealth and European 100m titles to his own sprinting cv.

The 100m in Sheffield this afternoon is the second of four races in eight days between Chambers and Greene – they meet in Lausanne on Tuesday and in Paris on Friday – and the 24-year-old Briton will be hoping for further evidence that he is taking a high-speed step forwards after slipping from third to fourth to fifth in the last three major championship 100m finals (1999 world championships, 2000 Olympics, 2001 worlds). Having clocked 10.05sec in Oslo (to Greene's 10.06), he would also like to break through the 10-second barrier for the first time this summer.

There is little doubt that Chambers is shaping up radically to revise his three-year-old personal best of 9.97sec. His strength, his start, and his speed endurance have all improved this summer since his nine-week stint in San Francisco training under the direction of Remi Korchemny, a Ukrainian sprint coach who has been widely described as the man who guided Valery Borzov to the Olympic 100m and 200m crowns at the 1972 Olympics.

As veteran students of the sprint game will know, it was in fact Valentin Petrovsky – a lecturer at Kiev's Institute of Physical Culture – who was Borzov's coach and mentor, though Korchemny, it seems, also helped in the development of the man whose Munich sprint double inspired the New York Times headline "The Fastest Human is a Commie". He has certainly helped Chambers. "Remi has taught me how to control my power," the north Londoner said. "He has taught me how to use it more efficiently." Maurice Greene, the fastest human of the 21st century, can testify to that.

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