Athletics: Greene's speeches lack spice after taste of Bailey's

SHORTLY BEFORE half past four on the opening day of the World Indoor Championships in Maebashi the crowd got up and left. Schooltime was over. Packing the stands with uniformed children was the only course of action for the organisers, who were faced with the embarrassing prospect of the Emperor and Empress of Japan presiding over an opening ceremony in an empty stadium.

It came as something of a shock when the orderly young citizens made their mass exit - as if a computer-simulated crowd had slithered out of a film backdrop.

The operation reminded me of the toilets in the Takasaki Metropolitan hotel, where a fresh condom of protective polythene around the toilet seat rotates into place at the touch of a button. But perhaps that's my problem. As an exercise in stop-gap diplomacy, at any rate, it was effective.

A similar kind of exercise had taken place the day before, when Maurice Greene, America's world 100 metres champion, was introduced to the media to discuss his prospects in the 60m at these championships.

The first question from his Japanese interlocutor was the journalistic equivalent of pawn to king four. "Are you going to break the world record?" Greene, to whom that 60m world record belongs, produced Stock Response No 1. "I can't run for a world record. All I can do is run as well as I can and hope that the world record will happen." Fair enough. No arguing with that.

Then he was asked a second, more awkward question. Did he consider the Japanese sprinters seated alongside him as a threat? The two home athletes, Koji Ito and Nobuharu Asahara, were respectably quick, but leagues adrift of the Kansas City star. Tact was called for. And Greene opted for Stock Response No 2. "When you go to the line in a world championship, you have to consider all your opponents as possible rivals," he said.

Not spectacular, but it did the job. No feelings hurt, no feathers ruffled. And later he completed an effective PR task as he shook his Japanese opponents daintily by the hand.

Now if that question had been asked of the previous world 100m champion, Donovan Bailey, the response would almost certainly have been less kind and more colourful. And, it has to be said, more interesting. When Greene defeated Bailey in the world 100m final in Athens two years ago, he seemed almost taken aback by his success. His comments afterwards, in a voice barely above a whisper, were dotted with references to the Lord.

It became embarrassing - and Bailey, obliged to sit beside the American for the duration of the formal press conference, began to register each religious reference with increasing amusement. The naturalised Canadian has never been a big fan of American sprinters.

Earlier in 1997, Bailey accused Michael Johnson, of being "a chicken and a faker" after the double Olympic medalist had pulled up during a one-on-one 150m challenge against him in Toronto. Offered the chance to modify his statement months afterwards, he thought for a moment and, with a wicked smile, repeated it. It was immediately clear that Bailey was no loss to the diplomatic service when he succeeded Linford Christie as world 100m champion in 1995.

The Briton finished the race prostrate, clutching his hamstring. Bailey insisted he was not injured, an assertion he expanded upon while in London the following year, rescuing a shoe company press conference from death by boredom.

After winning the 1996 Olympic 100m title, Bailey was at it again, this time when asked - by a Canadian, as I recall - how important it was to be running for Canada. He replied that he was, essentially, running for the country of his birth - Jamaica. That was his true country. Which left the Canadians cross, and the Jamaicans wondering why he wasn't wearing their colours.

Who knows what kind of perverse pleasure Bailey takes in this kind of thing? It would be unfair, however, to single him out. Only this week, the world 800m record holder Wilson Kipketer, born in Kenya but now running for Denmark, was getting himself into similar bother at the Maebashi championships. Asked how important it was to be competing for his new homeland, he replied: "I run for myself." Which was no doubt true, but not the response either expected or required.

For undiplomatic sporting utterances, however, there is still nothing to match Alf Ramsey's comment at Glasgow Airport after his World Cup-winning England team had arrived to play their oldest rivals. On being greeted with the words "Welcome to Scotland", he responded, with characteristic emphasis: "You must be joking."