Life changes in 10 seconds

ATHENS, Greece — Ten seconds. Barely time enough to tie a shoe, wash a glass, get the paper off the porch.

But when the moment comes, and eight men kneel at their blocks and peer down the empty, waiting track, it is as if the entire Olympics stop to watch.

They race for a priceless moniker. Fastest Human on Earth. There is nothing in sports that means so much, seems so simple to understand, and is so quickly settled.

The 100-meter dash of Athens was Sunday night.

"Boom," silver medalist Francis Obikwelu said later. "That was it."

Just like it was for all the famous bullets before. Jesse Owens and Bob Hayes and Carl Lewis.

Can a man own the world in just 10 seconds? Sure, if they're the right ones.

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He is the quiet American sprinter. The straight man to the antics of more flamboyant teammates. A runner easily lost in the crowd.

Shawn Crawford, for example, ran the first heat of the Olympics wearing a cap backward. Defending champion Maurice Greene had his tattoo. GOAT. Greatest Of All Time.

Justin Gatlin once said he started thinking about running in the Olympics when he was five years old. Now he's 22. Sunday, at the beginning, he was the second youngest starter in the field. By the finish, he was the fastest man on the planet.

"This is what I was born for," he said. "This is why I started running, and this is why I live."

All his resolve, his heart, his very existence. All willingly given, for the moment of truth that will take 10 seconds.

But if the race is a blur, the minutes before somehow have the feel of the buildup to a heavyweight fight. The combatants in the ring. The buzz in the crowd.

On Sunday, five minutes before the gun, the full house at the Olympic Stadium did the wave. In lane 5, Obikwelu danced to the Greek music.

In lane 6, Jamaica's Asafa Powell lay sprawled on his back on the track in front of his starting block, meditating.

In lane 4, Crawford waved to the crowd.

In lane 7, Greene stormed up and down the track, as if a caged leopard ready to be set loose.

And Gatlin in lane 3? Gatlin did ... nothing notable. A lava lamp in a field of neon lights.

The Greek crowd began chanting its country's name. "Hellas! Hellas!"

So it could be said that a young man from Brooklyn was about ready to run like a bat out of Hellas.

"I had been watching people make history," Gatlin would later say. "People like Marion Jones and Maurice Greene, doing it time and again. I just wanted to be a part of it."

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His start was good, his finish better. He beat Obikwelu by an expanded chest, more or less.

"It was a close race," Gatlin said, "but I felt that I was hundred miles from everybody.

"I was just shocked my dream came true."

Said Crawford from fourth place, "He ran the race of his life.

"I know he's going to carry that title with honor and dignity."

Indeed, after a deluge of loud drug headlines that turned American track into a basket case, a personality in beige delivers the keynote address. "I want to show," Gatlin said, "that nice guys can finish first."

But there are always fresh faces with fast intentions. Only Lewis has repeated in the Olympics as 100-meter champion, and then because of Ben Johnson's failed drug test.

"I won't make it easy for him," Greene said, who went from gold to bronze in four years, and vowed he has more big races left in him.

But on this night, while Gatlin trotted on the backstretch, accompanied by a platoon of photographers, Greene jogged on the front stretch, wrapped in a flag. And all alone.

Everything had changed. In 10 seconds.