World Looks To Jamaican Superstar To Breathe Life Into Ailing Champs

Usain Bolt heads into today's second day of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics as the possible saving grace of a sport in turmoil.

With the men's 100m semi-finals and final set to highlight activities inside the Luzhniki Stadium today, track and field, at least for a little over nine seconds, will forget its problems, amid the latest doping scandals that have rocked a sport which was just beginning to reclaim lost trust.

Bolt booked his spot in today's semi-final, which gets going at 10:05 a.m. (Jamaica time), with an easy 10.07 seconds win in his heat yesterday.

The double Olympic champion and world record holder is expected to progress from there to the 12:50 p.m. final, where he is strongly favoured to win his eighth individual gold medal at this level.

"I am looking forward to it," Bolt told The Sunday Gleaner after yesterday's win. "It was all about getting through to the next round so I just took it easy and made it through.

"For me, I just want to come in here and do something special, and if that gets more persons interested in the sport, then that's a good thing," he had said when asked a couple days earlier about the possibility of a world-record assault.

Truth is, in this - one of its darkest hours - the entire track and field world is also looking for something special from the big Jamaican.

In 2008, Bolt, track and field's poster boy, was getting ready to unleash his immense talent on the world at the Beijing Olympics and, in essence, breathe fresh life into a sport that needed resuscitation, after years of drug scandals sent a flatline on its reputation.

What the big Jamaican did back then - by smashing three world records on his way to a trio of gold medals with a welcomed and highly marketable brand of swagger - in essence did as much for himself as it did for the sport.

He created a much-needed distraction from the suspicions that clouded the sport, and as his reign continued and his empire rose all the way through to last year's Olympic Games, the Jamaican superstar has been leading, perhaps unknown to him, a campaign to return the sport's reputation.

Five years later, and with the IAAF's showpiece event now in full swing, it seems in all honesty that not much has changed.

Massive doping scandals among Russian and Turkish athletes, and the recent news that the fastest American ever, Tyson Gay, along with Jamaican star and one-time world record holder Asafa Powell, and four of his compatriots, including Olympic 100m silver medallist Sherone Simpson, had returned positive drug tests knocked the wind of a sport desperately trying to catch up on drug cheats.

This was compounded yesterday when top Trinidad and Tobago sprinter Kelly-Ann Baptiste withdrew from the Championships with reports that she has failed a drugs test.

The IAAF World Championships is already struggling to excite locals in the host city - Moscow - without top stars such as defending 100m champion Yohan Blake, 800m champion David Rudisha, and 200m champion Veronica Campbell-Brown, who is also facing doping charges.

However, every hero needs a nemesis, and perhaps this is where American Justin Gatlin comes in.

A tainted athlete himself after serving a four-year drug ban, Gatlin is the last man to beat Bolt, doing so weeks ago at the Diamond League meet in Rome on June 6.

Gatlin also eased through in qualifying, posting 9.99 in winning his heat, as did other Jamaicans Kemar Bailey-Cole, 10.02, Nesta Carter, 10.11, Nickel Ashmeade, 10.12, with USA's Mike Rodgers, 9.98, and Jimmy Vicaut (France), 10.06, also expected to be in the mix.

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