Athletics: Fast but not loose

'TOMORROW is a new day,' Andre Cason said as he came off the track in Stuttgart last night with the time of 9.96sec burning against his name on the electronic scoreboard. The tomorrow in question comes today, when Stuttgart's Gottlieb Daimler Stadium should witness a series of sprint races fit to waken the gods.

One thing Andre Cason, Carl Lewis and Dennis Mitchell know for sure. If they want the 100m world championship, they are going to have to wrench it from Linford Christie's grasp. And the serenity which Christie displayed in his two races yesterday suggests that, of them all, he is the man with something in reserve for today's semi-finals and final.

You never know, though. Yesterday's two sets of heats represented a gathering drama which contained, in the second set of four races, an entire mini-series of its own, with plots and sub- plots and a climax that left many questions open for today.

In the first round, only Cason, winner of the US trials, stepped on the gas in the morning sunshine, uttering an unmistakeable threat to the better-known men with a time of 10.08 sec.

As a haze dulled the sun in the afternoon and the humidity rose above 70 per cent, the second round began. First Lewis came out of the blocks with unusual speed before bogging down and falling behind Robert Esmie of Canada and the 21-year-old Briton, Jason John. Briefly, all John could see of Lewis, two lanes away to his right, was a pair of high-lifting knees. But between 60 and 70 metres he had another view as the world record holder eased past.

Lewis's time of 10.11sec was immediately trumped by Dennis Mitchell, his team-mate, who emphasised his recovery from a knee injury by storming home in an exultant, air-punching 10.08. Then it was Christie's turn to stir the crowd, stopping the clock at 10 seconds dead without looking remotely as though he had been reaching all the way down.

Last of all came Cason, who followed his first coruscating performance by going four-tenths under even time. Suddenly the short, heavily muscled 24-year-old from Virginia Beach was looming as the greatest danger to the Briton's pre-eminence. But after his two full-throttle races, does Cason have anything left? Might a good start give Lewis an unassailable platform? Can the aggressive Mitchell hype himself to victory? Or are they wasting their time? Linford Christie will give us the answer to that one this evening, in a race that may make his Barcelona final look like a stroll.

Money talks, page 23