Why the Men's 100 Meters Is the Only Olympic Event That Matters

Right, I am not going to beat around the bush here—let's get straight down to business.

The men’s 100 meters is THE marquee event of any Olympic Games.

Others are important too, but none is quite as intrinsic to sport as the shortest sprint race on the Olympic schedule.

Every four years, there are many events that you will watch at the Olympics. You know the score, you come home from work, see a random event on TV, and can’t help but get engrossed in it.

You never knew it was on, but you will watch it anyway.

This is what makes the Olympics so unique—where else would you willingly watch rhythmic gymnastics or women’s water polo?!

But, the men’s 100 meters is unique. It is the one event that, like everyone else in your neighborhood, you simply must see. No recording, no casually flicking through the channels to see if there is a repeat of House on whilst they confirm the Air Pistol scores. Your schedule revolves around the race—you must be there to see it live.

And I love it.

It is probably my hatred of beating around the bush that helps me love the 100 meters—it is the antithesis of complication. Eight men, their legs, and a straightforward test to see who can reach the end of a track in the fastest time.

Simple, yet beautiful.

Running is perhaps the most basic athletic trait of man, and thus the most relevant. Who grew up wanting to be the world’s best hammer thrower? Koji Murofushi, maybe—but not many others.

Yet, who didn’t have dreams of being the fastest man in the world?

Exactly.

It is not just the purely athletic side of things that has gained the 100 meters its exalted status, for in that respect it is little different from the 200, 400, or even the 110 meters hurdles.

Rather, what separates it from the pack is its history.

Few sports can compete with the event’s 112-year legacy at the modern Olympics.

As an Englishman, I remember being told stories of Linford Christie's epic win in Barcelona 1992. Too young at the time, I got to see this mythical athlete for the first time four years later in Atlanta.

Comfortably in the final, I expected fireworks. Were sub-9-second times humanly possible? Confident in the extreme, my newest hero proceeded to get himself disqualified after two false starts.

What an anti-climax. I was gutted.

Then Donovan Bailey ran 9.84, set a new world record, and I was in awe again.

Bailey, as a Canadian, helped people forget about his rather infamous compatriot, Ben Johnson. A fellow sprinter, Johnson shocked the world when he won the 1988 final in a blistering 9.79.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he was quickly found to be up to the eyeballs in drugs. The image of Johnson marauding down the Seoul track, eyes red with fury (it turned out to be Stanozalol), is one that still haunts sprinting, and athletics in general.

The feats of Bailey, and later Maurice Greene, helped to repair athletics’ tarnished reputation. Amazing examples of human speed and dedication can do that, you know.

Carl Lewis, one of Johnson’s main rivals, was one of the main men responsible for building the reputation of sprinting that Big Ben did so much to tarnish. In his time the finest sprinter the world had ever seen, Lewis won individual gold medals in the 100 and 200 meters, and long jump.

He took nine Olympic golds in his career. How many people around the world grew up idolizing Lewis?

Lewis, however, grew up idolizing another athlete—Jesse Owens. Owens should be considered the godfather of sprinting. He is one of the greatest symbols of all that is majestic about the Olympics, and the 100m.

Owens’ story is well known. In Berlin, 1936, Owens was part of the U.S. team who made the trip to Germany. Adolf Hitler, watching on from the stands, hoped to use the Games as a tool to publicize his belief in racial (Aryan) supremacy.

Confident of German victory in all the main events, he saw the Games as a tool towards his expansionist plans.

Owens was the spanner in the works.

Under the nose of Die Fuhrer, the black American won the 100 meters in 10.3 seconds, which would eventually become one of four gold medals he collected at the Games.

The irony, however, is that Owens was far better treated in Germany than he ever was in America. Franklin D. Roosevelt, President at the time, refused to even acknowledge Owens after his epic achievements.

Nevertheless, Owens has gone down in history as a hero. He, like the event he dominated, is the embodiment of the Olympic motto, "Faster, Higher, Stronger."

The continued struggle to push the limits of human performance is what the 100 meters is all about.

In 2008, we can look forward to an absolute cracker of a race, adding another chapter to the 100 meters gloried past.

The three fastest men ever—Usain Bolt, Asafa Powell and Tyson Gay—should all be the lineup, all desperate to win.

Bolt, who ran 9.72 earlier in the year and thus set the current world record, is a 6-foot-5 Jamaican who has surprised the world with his running. "Bolted" on for the 200 meters, he is looking to do the sprint double.

However, Powell and Gay, two traditional powerhouses of recent 100-meter events, will be looking to prove they still have the edge, especially as Bolt is a relative novice to the 100-meter running.

What does this all point towards? It points towards one of the most exciting Olympic finals in decades, with (conditions permitting) a great possibility the world record will be broken.

But more importantly, it should restore the mysticism and wonder of an event that has been tormented by drug scandals.

A world record in the Olympic 100-meter final—what more could you ask for?

Those 10 seconds—where the commentators squeal barely comprehensible names, the stadium is lit by the flash of cameras and you only at the very end can identify the winner—is what the Olympics are all about.

It is why that gold medal, draped around the neck of the "fastest man in the world," is the single, most prestigious prize in any sport.

The history, the determination, the athleticism.

That is why, come race night, I will be sitting in my La-Z-boy, with a beer in one hand, a TV remote in the other, and a bowl of chips on my lap, and waiting for "the greatest show on turf" to begin.

It’s what dreams are made of.