Athletics: Sprinters' styles cramped by the weight of expectation

The image of England's two leading 100 metres sprinters coming to grief simultaneously, as if shot with air rifles, is now indelibly imprinted on the XVIIth Commonwealth Games.

Mark Lewis-Francis, who appeared to be drawing level with the eventual winner, Kim Collins, before pulling up over the final 40 metres and collapsing face down, revealed yesterday that his problem had been the same as the one which caused Dwain Chambers to hop out of contention: cramp.

And while Chambers, who returned to London for investigative treatment on his troublesome calf muscle yesterday, is still hoping to be fit for next week's European Championships, the younger man – who has what is described as "a micro-tear" in his right hamstring – now seems likely to end his season early. Running the relay here appears out of the question for either of them.

In the aftermath of their calamity in front of a capacity 38,000 crowd and a BBC audience of six million, there was much speculation that the two young men had been affected by the weight of expectation they carried into a meeting which had been built up in many parts of the media as a towering grudge match.

It was never that. Both have done little more than exchange playful verbal slaps in the last couple of weeks, and Lewis-Francis actually thanked the press yesterday for making the event "exciting", adding: "Dwain and I are best of friends". There was nevertheless intense pressure on both runners to produce outstanding performances on home soil.

The contrast between Collins and Chambers before the start of the race could not have been greater. While the man from St Kitts and Nevis smilingly shushed the crowd with a forefinger over his lips, the man who has twice beaten the world and Olympic champion, Maurice Greene, this season acknowledged the spectators by snapping off a series of edgy salutes before glowering down the track.

Both Chambers and Lewis-Francis were stricken at the moment when they asked a question of their body to which the answer was "no". Chambers was straining to compensate for a poor start; Lewis-Francis was seeking an extra burst of speed to press his medal challenge.

"I felt someone on my shoulder at halfway and I tried to turn it up a bit and jump into another gear," said the 19-year-old. "I wasn't strong enough to do it and my leg just gave way." What surprised him was that the problem occurred with his right hamstring rather than the left which has troubled him all season.

Chambers' difficulty was officially described yesterday as a "cramping condition" – the same one which affected him in the Sydney Olympics and the European AAA trials earlier this month. "Dwain tried to run through the pain which he was feeling right at the beginning of the race," the Team England statement went on.

Chambers' manager, the British 200m record holder John Regis, said the runner's persistent problems with cramping were the result of drinking too much, rather than too little before races. "While in many ways that's a good thing, what it seems to do in Dwain's case is dilute the amount of salt in his body. This is the cause of cramp," he said.

"After he had the problem at the AAA Championships he was given electrolytes, which seemed to solve it. But that was in training, where there's no adrenalin. In a race, when you are flat out, it's a completely different thing." He added that Chambers' poor starts here were partly caused by the difficulty he had in holding the "set" position because of a longstanding shoulder problem.

Chambers's agent, Jonathan Barnett, said: "We are going to get this thing put right once and for all. We are going to a specialist to find out what is causing these cramps. The aim at the moment is still to go to the Europeans." But while the physiologists, masseurs and nutrit- ionists get to work, there is only so much that can be done to prepare athletes' peak effort.

While it would not be fair to say that what befell Chambers and Lewis-Francis was a mental problem, it is possible that the intensity of the event prevented either from running in the relaxed mode which, paradoxically, produces the fastest performances. In that respect the silken technique of the man running to victory between them provided an object lesson.

The spectacle of one man down and one man hopping provoked recollections of other high-profile collapses in widely anticipated head-to-heads. When Michael Johnson and Maurice Greene finally met in the middle over 200m at the last US Olympic trials, neither man finished the race. In 1997, Johnson also pulled up clutching a hamstring halfway through his $2m challenge 150m race against the then Olympic and world 100m champion Donovan Bailey in the Toronto SkyDome. Two years before that, in Gothenburg, Linford Christie was similarly affected in losing his world title to Bailey.

In Toronto, notoriously, Bailey accused Johnson of being "a faker and a chicken". The American's response on being asked to respond the Bailey's jibe was a deadpan "Next question". But the question of why leading sprinters sometimes seize up at moments of maximum stress is one which will continue to provoke speculation. In Chambers' case, particularly, it is a question which needs to be answered soon if his problem is not to shift from his calf to his mind.

Bailey, whose ability to run relaxed whatever the circumstances was a consistent and crucial key to his success, acknowledged after Saturday's 100m final that sprinters need to be immune to unwanted influences before big races.

"There's a lot of extra strain because of the hype," he said. "But you have to get away from anything that is a distraction. Don't turn on the radio. Don't watch TV. You have to relax. Kim obviously didn't get caught up in the hype here like the others." So there you have it. It seems we are all to blame.