大象传媒

I heard a great little rumour the other day.

It might be true and it might not be true, but I trust my source, so let's go with it.

It concerns and and their living arrangements in the Olympic village ahead of Saturday's 100m final.

Bolt, first of all, is apparently sharing a room with his Jamaican team-mate Maurice Smith. A room with bunk-beds.

We'll leave for a minute the vision of a muscle-bound decathlete and a man of 6' 5" arguing about who gets the top bunk, and move on to Powell's deal.

Asafa is sharing with fellow sprinter Andre Wellington. He's okay with that.

What he's not so happy about, according to my source, is the fact that Usain's room is only two doors down.

Powell wants to keep his head down, to avoid any contact with his record-breaking compatriot, to avoid all mention of the showdown to come.

Usain, by contrast, is delighted.

He knows that Powell is feeling the pressure, but his own confidence is sky-high. He could talk about the Olympic 100m all day long, particularly to Asafa.

The more he talks to Asafa, the better he feels. The more Asafa hears, the more anxious he feels.

Now, as I say, it could all be nonsense. Apologies to the pair if it is.

But the reason I tell the story is to illustrate just how the 100m final - and who will win it - is dominating conversation in Beijing ahead of Saturday night's denouement.

Everyone you talk to has heard a rumour. Everyone has a theory. Everyone has a prediction.

Before Friday's heats, the majority were calling it between Bolt and Tyson Gay.

Olympic 4x100m gold medallist Darren Campbell told me it would be Bolt. The 1992 Olympic 100m champion Linford Christie told him it would be Bolt too.

Jason Gardener, another member of that 4x100m team, was going for Gay, as long as the American's hamstring injury had really cleared up.

"My rationale is that Gay has been there at a major championships and dealt with the pressure," he said.

"There's a whole world of difference between running one fast time at a Grand Prix, when there is no pressure on you, and going through four rounds at an Olympics."

Maurice Greene and Ato Bolden were also in the Usain camp. Add up the numbers overall, however, and they probably looked like this: Gay 45%, Bolt 40%, Powell 15%.

If that sounds harsh on Asafa, Friday's heats changed things around.

After Powell purred, Tyson tightened up and Bolt blew the rest away, the wind swung dramatically towards a Bolt victory, with Powell finally getting a bigger mention than Gay.

Michael Johnson even went as far as saying, "I've never seen anything like that before," and Michael Johnson has seen most things in sprinting.

"At this stage we're pretty much guaranteed to have a world record in the 100m," he added, "and Usain is pretty much guaranteed a gold medal."

Still - no-one can be 100% sure. They're the three fastest men in history, racing against each other for the first time ever. Wonderful things could happen.

Campbell has an excellent theory on what each man must do to maximise his chances.

"Powell can't run people down," he says. "That means he has to be leading at 60m to have a chance of gold.

"If he's not leading by that stage, it's too late for him. He's got to be leading all the way or he's not going to make it.

"If Gay is fit, he can be behind at 60m and still win, because he's capable of running people down, including Powell.

"The one person Gay can't run down is Bolt.

"No-one can chase Bolt down. The other two rely on power, but Usain has that 200m strength.

"Don't get me wrong - he has power too, but he doesn't have to rely on it.

"Once he's into his running, he has such a long stride length that he can just go away from the rest of the field."

Then we come to the matter of the world record.

Campbell doesn't think it matters, not in an Olympic final. He points out that a world record hasn't been broken in an Olympic final since Donovan Bailey's 9.84 seconds in Atlanta 12 years ago.

Others like Johnson are sure we'll see Bolt's current mark of 9.72 seconds destroyed.

The weather should be perfect - warm without being too humid, the 10.30pm local start time taking the sting out of the daytime heat.

There hasn't been much wind, and the track inside the Bird's Nest is said to be fast.

If you wanted my prediction, I'm going Bolt, Powell, Gay in that order, but then again I said Padraig Harrington would never make it through the first round of the Open.

A Jamaican. I'll stick with that