Athletics: Rapid Chambers ready to relegate Manchester blip to history

Some called him a bottler when he limped across the finish line last in the Commonwealth Games 100 metres final in Manchester. But that was two months ago.

Dwain Chambers brings down the curtain on his summer season at the World Cup in Madrid tonight having bottled up enough vintage form to prove his worth among the all-time greats of sprinting.

A simple glance at the world's fastest 100m times for the year underscores the young Londoner's elevated standing in the global scheme of things. It reads: 9.78 seconds Tim Montgomery, 9.87sec Dwain Chambers, 9.89sec Maurice Greene. "It looks good," Mike McFarlane, Chambers' coach and mentor, mused yesterday. "And it's just the beginning."

Amid the hysteria that followed Montgomery's world record 9.78sec run at the IAAF Grand Prix final in Paris last Saturday, it was barely noticed that Chambers clocked his 9.87sec, equalling Linford Christie's nine-year-old British and European record, while in the act of deceleration.

The photo-finish picture showed the Belgrave Harrier clearly pulling back his chest as he hit the line. "Dwain definitely eased down," McFarlane said. "He backed off when he got to the grid because he realised he was going to be second. To be honest, if he'd run through the line he would have probably run 9.83sec."

And 9.83sec was the time Ben Johnson set with his first world-record run, the one that stunned the world in Rome in 1987. Only two men have run faster: Montgomery, with his winning 9.78sec last Saturday, and Greene, with the 9.79sec world record he set in Athens three years ago.

Chambers himself said yesterday: "There's definitely more to come. I was not happy with my race in Paris. Technically, I did a lot of things wrong."

Whether Chambers will get everything right in La Comunidad stadium tonight remains to be seen. Montgomery's withdrawal from the individual 100m has made the prospect of another scorchingly quick race less likely, although the American's girlfriend – one Marion Jones – spoke yesterday of the British men's team captain as a potential threat to the world record. "The likes of Maurice Greene and Dwain Chambers are not just going to sit back and let this 9.78 stay around for years," she said.

Much will depend on Chambers' state of mind as he settles into his starting blocks. "At the start of the week I was really up at the thought of taking on Montgomery again," he said, "but that is irrelevant now. If I were in his shoes I would probably be taking it easy too. All I want now is to win, to get a victory for the team."

There is still a possibility of Chambers taking on Montgomery tonight. The world record holder intends to warm up before deciding whether his "sore body" is fit enough to run last leg of the 4x100m relay.

"The relay is different," he said, "because it's blasting out of the starting blocks that really puts the strain on the body."

Chambers knows all about those strains, having suffered calf cramps in rising from his starting blocks in the Commonwealth final. The so-called bottler has battled back from that painful disappointment to improve his lifetime best by 0.10sec this season, a huge margin in élite sprinting terms.

"Even though Dwain finished second on Saturday he delivered big time," McFarlane said. "He has run the seventh fastest time in history at 24 years of age. And he has still got a lot to improve on.

"He's had an excellent season. Just the one blip, in Manchester. But that blip could be the big turning point in his career."