Well, it appears as though nobody in the London 100m had a start, except for Clarke.
Check out Gay...he gets zero drive from his front foot in the blocks. He basically stands up, then puts his head down a bit and starts running. Gay showed no drive phase whatsoever, and thereby leaves .10 on the table. He relies on his turnover the entire race. He looked sluggish, chugging to the victory.
The thing was that nobody looked any better! WTF? Clarke and Kimmons actually looked OK, but Clarke has no top-end, and Kimmons tied up. Rodgers was looking sluggish too, Bailey has absolutely no start whatsoever, Carter is washed-up, and Collins didn't even bother starting the race!
That looked horrible, although the winning times were OK, but here's the thing: THAT is what a CLEAN race looks like, for those of you who don't know. No 9.7's, no impossibly fast blazing out to a 5m lead, no winding it up the entire 100m and not slowing appreciably. All the races looked to have obvious flaws, notably the starts--and those that actually looked good, weren't the winning times.
There is no ubermensch--at least not clean.
Bolt's "treatments" worry me. We all know these guys can cycle on and off stuff quickly, and that Bolt is a protected species, as is his "training partner" (partner-in-crime), Blake. It will be easy to tell if Bolt has used, come the Games--and no, it won't be just because he wins, or runs a great time, it will be how he does it. Bolt has looked relatively crap recently, like Gay and others did in the London race, because they have been clean. Same with Powell, who can rock a first 50 but who pays the price in the last 50.
So far on the year, the only Terminator has been Blake. Against anybody else, everybody else has a chance. Gay can beat Gatlin, Gatlin can beat Powell, Powell can beat Frater, and so on...but nobody can beat Blake.
Bolt knows this. Bolt's only hope is to dope. He can try to get healthy, but these little sprint things can kill you. Just the smallest tweak in his ankle, and he won't be able to do any block work, and there goes his start. Just the smallest soreness in his back, and he gets up too early, and his drive phase is gone. Etc. All the while, Blake is pumping up like you wouldn't believe.
If all of Bolt's rest worked perfectly and he came to the games perfect, and clean, he would run his Rome race--and LOSE to Blake.
He NEEDS to be able to go 9.6x to win, something he has probably never done while clean, and he knows it. Will his urge or need to win cause him to dope? Absolutely. It's a different era, he knows he is safe. He has 9.58 and 9.69 precedents, so 9.6x would not raise eyebrows.
The bottom line is that Blake is using, and that a doped Blake can beat a clean Bolt; however, nobody can beat a doped Bolt.
At this point, I believe that Bolt has been scoping out the competition, and after having watched this London race, knows that Blake is the only one to worry about (unless guys like Gatlin or Powell do some pre-games dosing). After seeing this London race, he will see the HUGE contrast between Blake and everybody else, and will not be content with being "the best of the rest".
3 concrete predictions, based upon my knowledge of psychology and my fantasy beliefs about doping:
1) Blake will PR in the Games, or come very close to it, and will finish as the silver medalist
2) Bolt will win the Olympic 100m
3) the clean winner of the Olympic 100m will be the bronze medalist
...IF Blake doesn't get caught. The only alternative scenario that I can see is that, even though Bolt will dope, it will be too little and too late to catch up to Johnson 4.0, who is doping like nobody's business.
Nobody has really cared about doping in the 100m, based on the belief that all the top guys were doing it. And they were.
But this year, I really do think there is a decent chance that everybody is more-or-less clean, except for Blake.
If Blake wins, he will be the Ben Johnson of the London games. A whole bunch of the participants in the Seoul 100m had doping issues, either before or after the 1988 Games, but IMHO were "more-or-less" clean in that race, except Johnson, who stood out like a sore thumb, exactly the way Blake will look if he wins.
I really wonder what kind of insurance Blake has to guard against disclosure by Bolt. Would Bolt, if he stayed clean, point the finger at a victorious Blake? I don't know, it's hard to predict what a moment of that magnitude would do to him. I think Bolt knows what's good for him, and wouldn't say anything, and would just concentrate on getting the 200m gold, relatively certain in the knowledge that Blake will get crushed by a Johnson 5.0 in Rio.
But my money's on Bolt for the Games. It won't be long now--just Monaco to go.
BTW, I don't even care about doping, I just find it all fascinating and very exciting. Blake is the one who has done the absolutely smartest thing--he immediately recognized the double standard that applied to Bolt, and hooked into it, so that it now includes both of them. Smart. Powell is on the outside, looking in, without the same options.
Smart move, Blake. It's now a 2-man race, which is 1 more man than we had in Beijing.