Let the Head Games begin

 ATLANTA -- Think of the men's 100-metre Olympic event as a variation of the Georgia State Lottery in which only eight tickets have been printed and the Grand prize is, oh, about $10 million.
  Beginning Friday at 11 a.m., 107 sprinters will start lining up at the Olympic Stadium to stake their claim on one of the precious stubs. The process will take two days and, at the end, the lucky eight will emerge for a Saturday night showdown that is shaping up as the biggest crapshoot in Olympic sprinting history.
  The event is an oddsmakers nightmare. Never has the world's pool of sprinters been so deep. Some track watchers believe any runner fast enough to make the eight-man final can win it, and win it in world-record time.
  "Nobody's the favorite,'' said Bruny Surin. "Everyone who makes the final has a chance to win.''
  The sex appeal of the 100-metre final is rooted in raw speed and power. But before that 10-second explosion comes the psychological jockeying played out through the heats and the semis. The best sprinters see these races as an opportunity try to stamp cleat marks into the psyche of their opponents. Sometimes an inexperienced racer makes it easy for the oldtimers by stepping all over himself.
  That's what today is all about. At least 90 per cent of the field has virtually no chance of making it to the final. The others will be using today's two heats and tomorrow morning's semis to not only nail down a favorable lane for the final, but also to give the competition something to think about.
  It is a game filled with machismo, a silent game in which sprinters act as if the guy in the next lane doesn't even exist.
  Asked yesterday to assess rivals Dennis Mitchell and Frankie Fredericks, Canada's Bruny Surin's response was terse: "I have nothing to say about them.''
  Then he was asked if he had discussed the Olympics with friend and teammate Donovan Bailey.
  "The only thing I care about is how I will run,'' he said. "I don't care about the other athletes.''
  But is he capable of beating Bailey?
  "I didn't come to the Olympics to beat Donovan. I just came to run my own race. No one in this field is unbeatable.''
  Bailey and Surin, the gold and silver medallists from the 1995 World Championship, are safe bets to get to the final and decent bets to win medals. But it would be rash to pencil either of them in for automatic glory.
  Bailey's fastest time this year of 9.93 seconds is the world's fourth best in '96, behind Fredericks (9.86), Mitchell and Ato Boldon (both at 9.92). Mike Marsh (9.95) and Jon Drummond (9.98) have also bettered 10 seconds this year.
  Saturday's gold medallist is also expected to walk away with the world record, currently held by Leroy Burrell (9.85). Bailey's prediction is that it'll take a world record to win, "unless there is too much tension,'' and the entire field tightens up, which is not improbable.
  Predictions of an extremely fast final are founded largely on the quick times this year. But it is probably worth remembering that some of those times were posted in races that had lax drug testing. They also came at meets in which there were no heats and little real pressure.
  The Olympics is two days of demanding racing, two days of running heats, of squatting into the blocks, of staring down the pressure, of playing mind games and of pounding down a track all the while praying you don't pull a muscle.
  Entering the heats, the sprinters will want to show enough to give the competition reason to worry, but no so much that they're spent before the final. It is a bit of a shell game, a game that no one played better than Ben Johnson. He never showed more than he had to in the heats and then he retreated to a corner and showed his utter disdain for the competition by dozing off for a nap.
  Bailey and Surin proved at last year's world championship that they can handle the physical demand and mental pressure of a two-day event. But they're working hard to paint others as the pre-race favorite. Bailey, in particular, has been groaning steadily about various physical and emotional obstacles he is battling. If his intent has been to get the competition guessing about his readiness, he has probably succeeded.
  We'll know for sure soon enough. The sprinters are almost at the starting line, so let the Head Games begin.