Feud adds spice to sprint showdown
A simmering feud between the two fastest men in England has added extra spice to the Commonwealth Games athletics programme starting on Friday.
Dwain Chambers and Mark Lewis-Francis have helped set the scene for an intriguing 100 metres, the final of which will be on Saturday, by trading insults with each other in the lead up to the Games.
The two Englishman are expected to go one-two in the final but both have made it clear they will not settle for silver.
Lewis-Francis, 19, upset Chambers when he claimed the 24-year-old was "running scared" of him when he pulled out of a planned meeting in Birmingham earlier this month.
Chambers replied by saying that he feared no one and described the comments as a nonsense.
Their bubbling feud has only helped add fuel to a race that already promises to be the highlight of the Games despite the absence of 1998 champion Ato Boldon of Trinidad and Tobago. The athletics programme starts at 1100 GMT on Friday.
The final could potentially feature eight men who have all broken the 10-second barrier with a third Englishman, Jason Gardener, likely to be joined by four-times Olympic silver medallist Frankie Fredericks of Namibia, Kareem Streete-Thompson from the Cayman Islands, Deji Aliu of Nigeria, Sydney bronze medallist Obadele Thompson from Barbados, and Kim Collins, the Olympic finalist from St Kitts and Nevis.
PRE-RACE FAVOURITE
Chambers, the European number one, is the pre-race favourite after beating world record holder and Olympic champion Maurice Greene twice this season but does not have a great record in major championships.
He finished third at the 1999 world championships but slipped to fifth at last year's worlds. He also missed a medal at the Sydney Olympics, finishing fourth, but made amends by winning last year's Goodwill Games in Brisbane.
He has a personal best of 9.97 seconds and has been clocked at 10.03 seconds this season, and has been talking up his chances in Manchester, even claiming he can threaten Greene's world record of 9.79 on the track.
"Anything's possible," he said. "I don't put any limitations on myself. In the heat of the moment, adrenalin pumping, medals on the line, you don't know what will happen."
FASTEST TEENAGER
Lewis-Francis, who skipped the 2000 Sydney Olympics to win the junior world championship 100 metres in Santiago, is one of the fastest teenagers on the planet.
Sprinters do not normally mature until the mid-20s but the young Englishman is determined to break the mould and emerge as Britain's successor to 1992 Olympic champion Linford Christie in time for the 2004 Athens Olympics.
He has shown great form this year and his best time this season is 10.04 seconds, just 0.01 seconds behind Chambers.
The 100 metres will be staged over two days with the first and second rounds to be held on Friday and the semi-finals and final on Saturday at 1935 GMT.
