Athletics: Dwain train gathers speed as Chambers leaves horrors behind

Dwain Chambers has come a long way very quickly since he was last seen on a track in Britain. The young man who limped over the line last in the Commonwealth Games 100m final three weeks ago, clocking 11.19sec en route to the treatment room in the City of Manchester Stadium, now has a European title and a personal best that Linford Christie bettered on only three occasions during the course of his long and distinguished life in the fast lane.

The 9.94sec that Chambers clocked behind Tim Montgomery in his heat at the Weltklasse meeting in Zurich on Friday night was quicker than all of Christie's performances bar his winning run at the world championships in Stuttgart in 1993 (9.87sec), his gold medal run at the Commonwealth Games in Victoria the following year (9.91) and his time in fourth place in the 1991 world championship final in Tokyo (9.92). At 24, moreover, the Belgrave Harrier is the 100m champion of Europe.

Chambers, a bottler? A battler, more like. Just ask Kim Collins, the sprinter from St Kitts who struck Commonwealth gold ahead of the cramping Chambers and the hamstrung Mark Lewis- Francis in Manchester. Chambers beat him twice on Friday night, in heat and final. Then, of course, you could ask Maurice Greene too.

He was supposed to settle a score against Chambers in Zurich. Instead, the world champion, world record holder and Olympic champion trailed in his wake for the third time this summer.

Chambers was beaten in the final by two Americans, Tim Montgomery (9.98sec) and Coby Miller (10.00), in a race run into a 1.3 metre-per- second headwind; the Briton, who had been helped by a 1.6 metres tailwind in his heat, clocked 10.05 in third. Having finished fifth in the world championship final in Edmonton last summer, though, it was clear evidence that Chambers is rising in the global order once again.

"I have been working really hard," he said after the race, "and now that work is paying off. I've got two personal bests out of this season and hopefully I can go quicker again." That would be too much to hope for at the Scotstoun Stadium in Glasgow this afternoon, when Chambers runs in the Norwich Union International meeting against a United States team missing Greene, Montgomery and Miller.

It might be different at Crystal Palace on Friday, though, when Greene and Co will be in town for the Norwich Union Grand Prix.