Tyson Gay

In the three years since he has been competing as a professional, Tyson Gay has rocketed to the forefront of world sprinting, easily making himself one of the few odds on favorites for 100m Olympic gold medal in Beijing this summer.

Tyson has always been a standout sprinter. As a student athlete at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky, he was a three-time Class 3A state champion over 100m and, to date, his winning time of 10.46sec state-meet record from 2001 still stands.

Following high school, Tyson enrolled at Barton Community College in Kansas, where he began working with his current coach, Lance Brauman (who also coaches Veronica Campbell, among others). At Barton, Tyson won national Junior College titles over 60m indoors, as well as over 100m outdoors. In 2004, Tyson transferred to the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, where he won the NCAA 100m title for the Razorbacks.

In his first year as a professional in 2005, Tyson was among the favorites to win a medal over 200m at the World Championships in Helsinki, but finished in fourth place, just missing a medal. That disappointment served as ample motivation for Tyson, who came back in 2006 to win the US national title over 100m, as well as capturing the gold medal at the IAAF World Cup over the same distance. His massively improved personal bests that year (9.84 and 19.68) made him the fastest 100m/200m combination runner in history.

His next year was even more spectacular. At the US outdoor championships, Tyson completed one of the greatest sprint doubles on record: with six races in four days, Tyson won the 100m in 9.84 (into a headwind) and won the 200m in 19.62, making him the second fastest man ever over the distance. Tyson held that form well through the summer, capturing his first World Championship titles that August in Osaka, Japan: the first over 100m, in a thrilling race that saw him defeat world record holder Asafa Powell in their only meeting of the year, and the second over 200m, in which Tyson held off Jamaican Usain Bolt, as well as Tyson’s former teammate, Wallace Spearmon. Tyson capped off his stellar season with a gold medal in the 4x100m relay, and set the stage for what will be one of the most anticipated events at the Beijing Olympics.