The fastest pair by a street

The nature of Maurice Greene's victory was predictable. The margin of Marion Jones's win was embar- rassing. Either way, Saturday's two 100 metres finals lacked the dimensions that would have placed them among the great performances.

The Kansas City Cannonball swaggered to the start line, shoulders rolling, tongue flicking out, staring at a point in space somewhere far down the road.

"As I was walking out," he said afterwards, "my coach, John Smith, told me, 'Your start sets up your finish.' So I focused on my start."

In my beginning is my end, as the prophet said, or possibly vice versa. At any rate Greene's start was not so spectacular. His reaction time, 0.197sec, put him sixth of the eight runners, ahead only of Dwain Chambers, in the next lane, and Kim Collins of St Kitts and Nevis, delighted to be in his first Olympic final and not too worried about how he performed.

The fastest man out of the blocks, as he had to be, was Ato Boldon, the bronze medal winner in the event four years ago. Poor Boldon, who is Greene's training partner, was stuck out in lane eight, the result of someone else's fast start in his semi-final.

In that race Jon Drummond, the veteran American who is another member of Smith's squad, had gone off like a jet, leading Greene for a good distance and finding enough of a finish to keep Boldon at bay. Greene and Drummond therefore qualified for the favoured central lanes, alongside the first two from the other semi-final, Chambers and Obadele Thomp son, the highly promising Barbadian. Boldon was forced to take the luck of the draw on the outside lanes, along with Collins, Darren Campbell and Aziz Zakari of Ghana.

He had told his wife the previous day that he did not want to be drawn on Greene's left-hand side. The reason for that is that Boldon naturally drifts to his right while Greene drifts to his left. "I was trying to get lanes two or seven," he claimed with a bit of a smile.

But stranded out in lane eight, with Collins and Drummond separating him from any sort of contact with Greene, Boldon had to run his race virtually blind. There would be none of the benefit of running alongside a man of equal speed. Collins did not have the pace and Drummond had used up everything in the semi-final. Operating in isolation, Boldon would have to call on his own resources entirely.

His silver medal was therefore a tribute to his talent. Greene, thank goodness, broke the 10sec barrier for the first time in the meeting; so did Boldon. They did 9.87 and 9.99 respectively. Thompson was third in 10.04. Chambers, who had shown strongly in the early stages, finished fourth in 10.08, with Campbell sixth in 10.13. At least Boldon is not one for complaining. "The kind of race that Maurice ran," he concluded, "we all got destroyed."

Greene took his shoes off, threw one to the crowd and held the other up so that the cameras could zoom in on its gaudy design. This was the second part of an informal American shoe salespersons' convention, which had begun a little earlier in the evening when Marion Jones - representing the same manufacturer - turned up for her final in what might be shoes covered with some sort of silvery reflective material no doubt invented by Nasa with an altogether higher purpose in mind.

Jones won her final by 0.37sec, or about half the length of Sydney harbour bridge. These contests are supposed to be decided by hundredths of a second, not by what rowing people call "a distance", and one wonders how the other medal winners, Ekaterini Thanou of Greece and Tanya Lawrence of Jamaica, felt about being involved in such a non-race.

Jones, 5ft 10in tall and weighing 10st 10lb, is an impressive sight at rest. And when she runs, she runs like a train. She plans to win five gold medals here, with the 200m, the two relays and the long jump to come, and is not shy of speaking of the achievement in terms of a fait accompli.

At the moment, however, her chances of beating the four track and field gold medals won in a single games by Jesse Owens and Carl Lewis rest on too many variables. Her own form in the long jump is perennially erratic, although she has to get only one leap right to win the event. More of a threat is the state of the US women's track team, which may simply be unable to produce enough decent performers to lead her into the anchor leg of either relay.

And had she herself been saving anything of her effort while leaving the rest of the 100m field so far behind? "Oh, gosh," she said sweetly, "this is the Olympic Games and you've got to leave it all out there. I wasn't saving anything."

That is a relief, then.