BEIJING — How much is a good crowd worth to a runner? For Charlottetown's Jared Connaughton, about three-tenths of a second.
"Amazing," Connaughton said Monday morning, after he advanced to the semifinals of the men's 200 metres with a time of 20.60 seconds, on a bright, clear morning at The Bird's Nest. "I was just kind of expecting to shake the rust off and have fun, because there were a lot of people out there; the Chinese guy was in the race and I knew the crowd would be good.
"But the crowd was on top of you. In any other venue, that time might have been 20.90, and just because it's the Olympics and in front of that crowd, it was 20.60."
Running at 10 a.m. local time, Connaughton's time - the 13th fastest of the day - was actually faster than that of Usain Bolt, who set the world record in the 100 metres Saturday. Bolt qualified easily for the semifinals, sauntering down his lane and looking about like a tourist crosing an unfamiliar street. He was second in his heat in 20.64 seconds.
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Connaughton's heat was the tightest of the morning, with Aaron Armstrong of Trinidad beating Brendan Christian of Antigua by one one-hundredth of a second, 20.57 to 20.58.
Canada's other 200-metre entry will have the rest of the games to cross Beijing's streets and saunter around. Brian Barnett of Edmonton got 75 metres into his race, then came to a stop, turned around and walked dejectly back toward the start while the rest of the field zoomed on toward the finish line.
Barnett said he'd suffered an upper leg injury just before the team's Singapore training camp and had hoped he'd be able to run.
"I didn't think it was anything more than a strain, but I didn't want to do any more damage," Barnett said. "I didn't think about not running (pulling out) until maybe 10 minutes before that race."
Connaughton said it would take 20.30 or 20.28 to get into the final, and under 20 seconds to medal. He says he's "well capable" of getting into the final. His personal best is 20.34 set at the Canadian Olympic trials in July.
"It will take a personal best to make the final, but it's in my range," said Connaughton, a 23-year-old law student at the University of Texas-Arlington. "It's just a matter of getting in the right lane in the semi and being smart in the rounds and not gassing yourself too much."
Connaughton and the rest of the competitors in the heat had to re-group after the Chinese runner, Paimeng Zhang, false-started.
"When I watch on TV, it makes me madder than when it happens in a race," said Connaughton. "But it's one of the things you deal with. The scary thing is when somebody jumps the second time, because then you know you could be next. It's his home crowd, so I knew he'd be pretty nervous."
