The Saturday Interview: Mild-mannered Powell has world at his feet
By Sue Mott
(Filed: 23/07/2005)



The fastest man in the world (ever) only managed about 10 yards of
the Crystal Palace track last night before keeling over with a groin
injury. Asafa Powell, the mild-mannered Jamaican who has held the
world record since June 14 this year, when he clocked 9.77sec for
the 100 metres at the Olympic Stadium in Athens, failed in his bid
to beat his arch-rival, the Olympic champion Justin Gatlin. But no
world record fell. Powell is still the main man.


On your marks: Asafa Powell is the fastest person in the world and a
decent young man with it
At least he retains the categorical record that he stripped from Tim
Montgomery, who ran 9.78 three years ago. Montgomery, the US athlete
still awaiting the result of a hearing into alleged doping offences,
issued an immediate response to the Jamaican's feat. "He is no
longer a sprinter among other sprinters. He is the one who can't
afford to lose," he challenged.

The intent was to induce fear and trepidation into the heart of a
young man so free in his attitude that he still trains by running on
grass in flat shoes, when the rest of his challengers are in highly
scientific hot-house conditions, not to mention spikes. "What a
shock," said Montgomery when told of the record. What a blessing,
the sport might say.

We could do with a less controversial record-holder than Montgomery,
especially as Powell's duel develops with Gatlin. The young American
wants to be world record holder. Powell wants the Olympic title.
This may be the beginning of a running storyline, if not last night,
then perhaps at the upcoming World Championships.

The 100 metres is war in parallel lanes. It takes the stride of a
gazelle, the size of a bullock and the heart of a warrior to win. It
does not, you would think, take sweet self-effacement. The recent
Olympic sprint champions of modern times are united in arrogance as
well as muscle. Maurice Greene, Linford Christie, Carl Lewis - you
might call them a lot of things, but shy isn't one of them.

What on earth is Powell doing in there? The 22-year-old is
positively bashful. The sixth son of two country pastors, he still
attends church every Sunday, sometimes lending a musical hand on the
bass guitar and drums. He had no idea he was a runner at school. He
thought he was a footballer. Running is what you did into the
penalty area, not as a career. Next thing you know he's the world
record holder. It all, appropriately, happened so fast. Perhaps he
hasn't had time to catch an ego.

He cannot quite rationalise it all. "Fastest man on the planet? It's
unbelievable," he said, fastening widened eyes on his interlocutor
over a huge plate of chicken and vegetables at City Hall this week
where he was having his photo taken with the mayor, Ken
Livingstone. "Even my friends still come up to me and say, 'You -
the fastest man on earth - I can't believe this because we were all
kids in high school together and yet look at you now.' It is strange.

"D'you know they showed me the yearbook we made in our last year of
high school. They said, 'Here you are', and there was my picture and
my prediction that I wanted to be the fastest man in the world. Yes,
it was funny. I looked very young in my school uniform." He laughed
as he does all the time, either to mask his embarrassment or
reinforce his amiability.

"I didn't even like running. It was just running. I didn't know you
could be a runner. I knew you could be a footballer. You went out
and trained. You could be on a team. All I knew about running was
that I could beat everyone, even the bigger boys, on sports day. I
used to run away from all the guys and then wait for them. But I
didn't run any other time. I used to walk, very slowly, instead.

"It was my teacher, Mrs Fraser, who told me I could be a runner. I
didn't always do what my teachers told me. But this time I did."

He also had a role model, his eldest brother Donovan - 11 years
older, he thinks - who reached the 1999 World Indoor Championships
60m final. He looked up to his brother as would a toddler to a
teenager. He admired all his brothers. The third in the series,
Nigel, taught him music. But he has also endured his share of
fraternal tragedy.

In 2002, his second-oldest brother, Michael, was shot dead. One bare
statistic in Jamaica's ever-rising murder rate, one familial
calamity that affected him badly. It was compounded the next year by
the illness and death of another of his brothers, Vaun. "I don't
know what happened with Michael," he said vaguely. "But it was very
sad and really scary. Both happened when I was running the national
trials in Jamaica. It was really hard. I always remember it was
June." His devout religiosity was a comfort. "It helped me a lot. I
grew up in the church. All my life. When I was in my mother's
stomach I was in the church. I just learned the right way of things
from my parents."

The Rev Cislyn Powell and the Rev William Powell are co-pastors of
the church in Linstead and they trust him not to deviate from a
virtuous path. "Every day, they come on the phone and they're
telling me, 'Asafa, do this' and 'Asafa, do that.' It is very
important to keep up with their wishes. But it's very difficult in
the sports world. We've got some places in Jamaica and the type of
crowd who go there are smokin' ganga and all that stuff. It feels
strange to me. I go because my friends are there, but sometimes I
avoid goin'.

"It can be difficult because girls throw themselves at me, now that
I'm well known and have a nice car." You wonder what a nice boy like
him does about girls like that. He laughed. "I just always keep my
girlfriend in my car." He doesn't mean he garages her, merely that
he takes her as an affectionate precaution against intruders on
outings. "I don't drink either. Mmm, maybe a little glass of Baileys
now and again."

It doesn't sound like student life as we know it. He lives and
trains on campus at Kingston University, unwilling to relocate to
America as do so many of his compatriots. He is in a minority of
approximately one for his weekly pilgrimage to church. He used to be
teased. "Church-boy," they called him, but such mockery has
curiously ceased now. "Well, um, no one wants to tease me now
because I'm doin' well. There's no point teasin' me when they want
to be like me."

Who wouldn't want to be like him in his homeland? It is certainly an
aspiration that belongs to this particular Caribbean island. Jamaica
has a habit of breeding the fastest sprinters in the world. Ben
Johnson, the drug-fuelled, disqualified Olympic champion of 1988 was
born there. Christie, the Olympic champion in Barcelona, was born
there. Donovan Bailey, the 1996 Olympic champion, was born in
Manchester, Jamaica.

In Powell's case, the desire was backed by genetics though he has
yet to discover to whom he is most indebted. "Both my mother and my
father say the talent is theirs," he said with a grin. "They both
are takin' the credit."

He believes in a more mysterious hand. "God has everything to do
with it. It wouldn't be possible without him." This lends him a
definite equanimity, useful in times of stress. At the World
Athletics Championships in Paris, 2003, while Jon Drummond, of the
United States, was lying flat in full toddler tantrum after being
disqualified from the 100m for false-starting, Powell was likewise
penalised.

"But I took it very well," he said mildly. "I thought, 'Well, God
just doesn't want me to do it now. It just isn't my time'. So I just
went out of the stadium and started laughing with my friends. It's
not the end of the world." He might have been tempted to think so
after the Olympic final last year, when as one of the race
favourites, he finished fifth.

Knowing onlookers would say he tied up with nerves. He prefers to
call it "inexperience". "I felt good on the start line. Everyone in
the world was watching. The stadium was packed. They were all
looking at me. It was exciting. A lot of things were running round
my body. Like adrenalin. I think, in the end, I lost because I had
run a little bit too fast in the earlier rounds. At the World
Championships in Helsinki I'm just going to do enough to qualify and
save more for the final."

He wants that title. "Olympic title. World title. Commonwealth Games
title. I want everything I can get," he said.

All this time, he impresses you as a decent young man. Normally
proportioned, as well. When his event is historically packed with
chemical cheating, the eye naturally roves in quest of ludicrous
muscle structure. No alarm bells ring. He sounds all the right notes
of condemnation.

"For the guys who are takin' drugs or took them before, it's very
unfair. But I don't think people will stop saying this, because
we're running really fast. I used to say it myself when I was
younger, 'That guy must be takin' drugs'.

"For me, I'm just glad I'm provin' a point that you don't have to be
on drugs to run fast. I surprised myself when I ran 9.77. I said to
myself, 'You can imagine if you had taken drugs you'd have run 9.5
somethin'.' It's very, very disturbin' that people throw away their
careers because of drugs but I'm glad the sport is cleanin' up." If
this sounds a touch naive, he does concede: "But they are always
comin' up with somethin' new."

We may need to get used to Powell. He will be 29 at the London
Olympics in 2012 and intends to stick around. "God has a plan for
me, so no point givin' up. I'm not very aggressive in how I sell
that plan because I'm a bit shy when it comes to public speakin'. I
have to use my legs to run fast instead."

In his blocks at the start of every race, he repeats the same mantra
in his mind. "I can do things through Christ who gives me strength."
It is a formidable encouragement. So is his name. Asafa
means "rising to the occasion". His ability to do so must be a great
consolation to his parents. "Before I was born, they really wanted a
girl," he admitted. "Luckily, I don't think they're disappointed any
more."

www.telegraph.co.uk/mott