‘Tainted’ United States team issues challenge to beaten Usain Bolt

World’s fastest man suffers first relay defeat in eight years but refuses to complain at having to race Gay and Gatlin

(Getty)

On the weekend of the Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao fight, they came out like boxers into the ring.

Fireworks flew into the Nassau night sky, the varying quartets for the IAAF World Relays each putting their own spin on the pre-race ritual.

The American women’s quartet in the 4x400m posed like Charlie’s Angels, Trinidad & Tobago’s sprinters played a game of rock, paper, scissors, while the Botswanans hit an imaginary golf ball into the distance.

While at the MGM Grand, the richest fight in history was billed as good versus bad in Pacquiao against Mayweather, it was a fitting allegory in the Bahamas. The money at stake for each winner – a pot of $50,000 (£33,000) shared between four was less than each fighter earned simply to lace up their gloves – but there was good and bad here too.

In fact, the event as a whole was a succinct summary for athletics in 2015: fighting to remain relevant and in the spotlight and battling its own demons over doping indiscretions.

That very issue was laid bare on the track as the two powerhouses of men’s sprinting, Jamaica and the United States, took to the track for the opening day of the two days ofweekend’s action on Saturday night.

Ryan Bailey is the sole member of the American quartet not to have failed a drugs test. Tyson Gay was the most recent positive in July 2013, the American blaming his misdemeanour on “putting my trust in someone – and was let down”. Mike Rodgers served time out of the sport in 2011 for the banned stimulant methylhexaneamine. He initially claimed he had drunk an energy drink in an Italian nightclub before later admitting to takehaving taken a supplement called Jack3d, which led to a nine-month suspension.

And then there is Justin Gatlin, twice banned, twice back and an athlete the sport could do without. Gatlin steered clear of doping, instead looking to Las Vegas for his comparisons: “You see Pacquiao-Mayweather go head to head and that’s what we need.”

To his credit, Usain Bolt said in the build-up it was wrong that Gay had been given a reduced ban after working with doping authorities, before in the next breath insisting that Gatlin deserved a place at the top table, having served his time for his past illegality.

“It’s just one of those things in this sport,” said the fastest man on the planet. “I can’t stand there and say, ‘Oh, it’s all wrong’.

Gay sticks steadfastly to the story that his own positive test was not of his doing, saying: “I’ve never deceived any kid, any American that they can’t[can] do anything if they don’t put the work into it. My situation is understood, three organisations agreed it was a mistake. I’d like to apologise to any kid who thinks they were deceived. The past is the past and I’m after forgiveness for my mistake.”

As if to make matters worse, the US line-up is coached by none other than Dennis Mitchell, who famously argued when testing positive for high levels of testosterone in 1998 that it was because of “five bottles of beer and sex with my wife at least four times”.

The reality is that whatever the machinations ofconcerning the decisions taken, Gay is free to compete, Gatlin too and, on the evidence of events in Nassau, the American contingent look strong, Gatlin particularly after a stunning second leg in the 4x100m home straight. It laid the marker for Bolt’s first relay defeat in eight years, a sign perhaps of a changing of the guard and an end to the Jamaican sprint hegemony.

Bolt did not look at his peak self, unsurprisingly perhaps at this point of the season. In the aftermath, he made all the right noises about not being in the best shape, needing more races and not being totally surprised.

But his face down the home straight – a mixture of shock and bemusement at his failure to eat up even a modicum of the ground he had to make up between himself and Bailey on the anchor leg – suggested the 28-year-old is further off the mark than he expected to be.

Perhaps refreshingly for a sport that relies so much on its ultimate showman, this event was not just about Bolt, who had arrived in the Bahamas on a private jet, and he was aware of that fact.

The usual histrionics were missing, a conscious decision by him. “It depends on the vibe I’m feeling,” he said. “Sometimes I’m not in the mood to go crazy, so it’s all about the mood that I’m in sometimes. You have to know when to do it and not. You have to focus on what you need to do. Come back and see me in two months.”

The same could be said of his running. Clearly, work needs to be done if he is to enjoy a potentially mouth-watering duelrivalry with Gatlin and Gay – whatever the rights and wrongs of it – this season.

For Bolt, the event was shrugged off as a bit of fun but there was a more serious element to it: in the $50,000 prize-money for each win, the automatic Olympic qualification for every finalist in the 4x100m and the 4x400m, and for the insight into the changing face of a sport that admits to struggling to attract the young.

The World Relays is exactly what the sport needs. Too often, globalathletics events are let down by, at best, half-filled stadiums. The 15,000-seater Thomas A Robinson Stadium had a few empty sides but the noise for the sport was second only to that experienced at London 2012.

A 200-strong troupe of dancers like performers from The Lion King opened up the event and repeatedly danced on a raised stage throughout while the locals, who claim the relays as their national sport, whipped themselves into a frenzy with each and every passing of the baton.

What happened on track set down intrigue for the season ahead about whether Bolt can, as he promises, get back to his best and those world record times from the 2009 World Championships in Berlin.

There was a hint he harks back to such times when he said,: “I have a lot more work to do and it makes it more exciting for the showdown in Berlin,” before correcting himself. Beijing and not the Bahamas, nor Berlin, is where it matters. On current form, he is clearly beatable.