Gwent | Archive | 2001 | August | 7
From the South Wales Argus, first published Tuesday 7th Aug 2001.
COULD his dyed gold hair be an omen that Christian Malcolm is going to win 200m gold in the early hours of Friday morning?
The 22-year-old runs in the opening heats of the men's 200m competition at the Commonwealth Stadium today at 4.45pm (BST) and after setting a personal best of 10.11 over 100m in Sunday's final, Malcolm is in good form.
With Malcolm a real medal contender and growing in confidence after finishing seventh in the 100m final, he now turns his attention to the real business of his preferred 200m. Malcolm has a tough challenge with Olympic champion Konstadinos Kenderis of Greece clocking 20.10 secs in Athens, and American Ramon Clay running 20.05 secs - the world's fastest time this year.
If you add Americans Shawn Crawford and Bernard Williams, as well as Malcolm's British rival and close friend Dwain Chambers to the equation, it is going to be an interesting show-down.
So, can the gold hair be matched by a gold medal? "It would be nice. The way I'm running at the moment things are going well, but all the 200m specialists haven't run and they are fresh. They might be watching me with fear, but they know I have a 100m in my legs.
"The field for the 200m is wide open and like I said before, my aim is just to make Thursday's final and once I do that, then anything can happen."
Wisely, Malcolm is refusing to put pressure on himself by predicting a medal. With his personal best standing at 20.19 secs set last year, Malcolm will have to push himself to the limit to threaten John Regis' British record of 19.94 set in 1993 at the Stuttgart world championships.
The second round for the Men's 200m is at 1.55am on Wednesday morning. The semi-finals start at 1.45am on Thursday morning, with the final taking place at 4.45am (all times BST).
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