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Gay finishes second in 100 meters

The time, the result, none of it was quite as bad as it looked. U.S. sprint star Tyson Gay finished second in an abysmal 10.26 seconds in a 100-meter race Saturday just two weeks before the U.S. track and field championships.

Steve Mullings, right, of Jamaica races en route to victory in the men's 100 meters against American Tyson Gay during the adidas Grand Prix in New York City. MIKE STOBE/GETTY IMAGES

Yet terrible weather and a trio of false starts that delayed the start significantly allowed Gay to walk away without despair as Jamaican Steve Mullings edged him in a photo finish at the Adidas Grand Prix.

Under gray skies and in cold, wet air at Icahn Stadium, Gay got out of the blocks slowly and couldn’t quite chase down Mullings, one of his training partners in Clermont, Fla. The fast-improving Mullings also clocked 10.26 (with a head wind measured at 3.4 meters per second).

“You try to block it out, but it gets a little frustrating,” Gay said. “I still have a positive mind frame. Once I put everything together, it’s going to be good.”

The slow times came a week after Gay put down a world-leading 9.79 in a race in Florida, and Mullings defeated the field at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore., with a personal best of 9.80. Trinidad’s Keston Bledman finished third in 10.33.

“He’s got a strong finish,” Mullings said of Gay. “I just got to get out of the blocks and hang on.”

Gay’s nemesis, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt, posted an impressive 19.86 in a rainy 200 race in Oslo Thursday, but has managed only a 9.91 this season in the 100. Gay still has the mental advantage of having handed Bolt his only defeat in the 100 in more than two years when the two raced last September.

The weather affected just about all of the sprinters Saturday. Allyson Felix won the 200 in 22.92 (into a wind of 2.8 meters per second), more than a half-second worse than her season best. Jeremy Wariner won the 400 in 45.13 — a time he said would have been in the 44s in better conditions.

Oscar Pistorius, a South African who runs on two prosthetic legs, was delighted with his fifth-place finish in the 400, but he missed the qualifying time for a place in this summer’s world championships in Daegu, South Korea.

Pistorius’s finish in 45.69 was 0.44 over the time he needs. He still has five more chances to qualify before the August event.

“With my ranking, I should have come in eighth in the race,” said Pistorius, who ran in lane one. “I was very happy with the outcome of the race. . . . It was a real blessing.”

One of the afternoon’s highlights came in the junior boys mile run when Lukas Verzbicas, 18, went under four minutes in his last high school race before heading to the University of Oregon. In light rain and gusting winds, Verzbicas took off with about 600 meters remaining, running away from Austin Mudd in the homestretch and finishing in 3:59.71.

“I did not know until the last 50 meters when I saw the clock,” said Verzbicas, who attended Carl Sandburg High in Orland Park, Ill. “I was really hurting . . . I gave it everything I had the last 50 meters and it all came together.”

The race came a week after Verzbicas had set the high school record over two miles, but he didn’t approach Alan Webb’s high school mile record of 3:53.43 on Saturday.

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