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 | | You are in: In Depth: World Athletics: Our man at Edmonton |
| |  Thursday, 2 August, 2001, 02:23 GMT 03:23 UK Bailey seeks fitting finale  Bailey is reaching the end of the road By BBC Sport Online's Tom Fordyce in Edmonton Once the most famous man in athletics, Donovan Bailey now stands as testament to the cruelly ephemeral nature of the modern-day sporting hero. Five years ago in Atlanta, he achieved the dream double of Olympic 100m gold and a new world record of 9.84secs. He even anchored the Canadian 4x100m relay team to glorious victory over the Americans. His face was in Adidas commercials around the globe, his race fees unmatched, and stellar status in his home country guaranteed.
When Edmonton first bid for these World Championships, Bailey was the public face of it all. He knew that by the time they came round he would be 33 years old - but so what? Linford Christie took Olympic and World titles at a similar age. The stage was set for a wondrous homecoming. Except, of course, things haven't worked out quite as planned. He arrived in town on Tuesday with barely a fanfare, a shadow of his former destructive self. Achilles, heel and knee injuries have taken a heavy toll. "What are my chances of making it through round one? I have absolutely no idea," he told reporters. "I'm finished after this. I'm going to need surgery for sure. I'm just trying not to damage anything too much." Bailey found out at the start of the week that he has a torn meniscus in his right knee.
Apart from scuppering his hopes in the individual 100m, the injury also spells the end of his involvement in the relay, even if a huge row with Canadian team coach Les Gramantik hadn't done that already. "There's no way - besides the fact that I haven't trained with them all year, the knee can't withstand it," said Bailey. Maurice Greene had long ago stolen Bailey's limelight on the international stage. But the very least the Jamaican-born Ontarian hoped for was a chance to bow out in style. Limping out in the heats in front of a half-empty stadium was not in the grand plan. "I'm here, one, because I ruptured the Achilles (in 1998), two, because I was sick in Sydney, and I didn't want to end that way," he said. "And I guess a third thing, maybe the main thing, is that the championships are in Canada, or I wouldn't even have trained at all this year. "But I'm here, and I'm going to step on the track and then we'll see. "The Olympics would have been the perfect way to end it, but once I did the Achilles, I knew it might not end with a win.
"Maybe this (torn cartilage) is a warning sign that I've gotten all I can out of my body." With Bailey in this state and his team-mate Bruny Surin, 100m silver medallist in Seville two years ago, also past his best and heading for retirement, there is a real fear in the city that Canada could be the first host country not to win a single World Championship medal. It's an unhappy prognosis for a country that seemed to have come of age in track and field during the mid-1990s. Bailey can at least find a small crumb of comfort in the fact that his earlier achievements played a pivotal role in bringing the championships to Canada. "We couldn't have foreseen the problems the program would have between then and now," he said. "But our success on the track, for sure, was a big factor in getting the Worlds here." | |
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