The Editor, Sir:

Mr Anthony Foster is a sports journalist for whom I have the greatest respect. But he seems to have uncharacteris-tically fallen into the popular 'trap' of ignoring the hard, cold, incontrovertible facts when discussing the exploits of Asafa Powell.

Foster went into a discussion of Asafa's training habits and of his attitude, in an effort to show why he is not running as fast as he could, or at least fast enough to beat Usain Bolt. In doing so, he makes statements like: "It is said that Asafa always weakens after 80-90 metres" and "It is said that Asafa is lazy". But there are two things Foster did not consider: [1] All sprinters weaken after 80-90 metres and 'fast finishers' are those who weaken the least. [2] The criticisms one heard about Bolt's 'laziness' are far more justified than those about Asafa. These truly superior athletes generally find winning so easy that they [sometimes] don't take the hard grind of training as seriously as most others do.

Scientific fact

But, all this aside, the fact I want Foster to consider is that Asafa Powell, in his leg of the relay in Beijing, ran the distance faster than any human being has ever done. This is scientific. It is verifiable. So he can run faster than everyone else on the planet, when he is ready to run.

When I was in high school, there was this lad who beat everyone in training runs. Yet, on the big days he went to pieces and always performed badly. We dismissed him as being weak-willed, 'soft'. In those days we knew little of psychology or we would have known that he was having 'panic attacks', a psychological, treatable, problem. I keep wondering if Asafa's problem falls in this range. So, for one-off races, he is fine, but the slow build-up through the rounds in these major champion-ships creates a tension in him that is overwhelming.

Why this would be a problem is that he may not be able to use available drugs to help him [they would make him sluggish, thus defeating the purpose]. If this is the case, losing to Bolt and then running that fantastic leg may be 'just what the doctor ordered'.

If it were, Usian Bolt will not be able to celebrate at 90 again!

I am, etc.,

KEITH NOEL

keithanoel@gmail.com