It remains to be seen whether a legitimate 100 meter challenger to Usain Bolt will emerge from the US Olympics trials as injuries and mediocre results have hampered the men’s sprint team this season.
 Athens Olympic gold medalist Justin Gatlin has yet to break 9.90 in a wind legal race this season after a barnstorming 2015, when he won silver at the Beijing World Championships. Trayvon Bromell, who picked up the bronze in Beijing, is a question mark due to an Achilles injury.
 Gatlin, 34, said Wednesday that his slow start is part of a bigger plan.
 “I basically have to run two championships in one year, so I wanted to start slower this year so I can prepare myself for that,” he said in Eugene, Oregon, where he is getting ready to compete in the trials beginning Friday.
 Sprinters Tyson Gay, Marvin Bracy and Mike Rodgers also have a chance at reaching Rio as the top three finishers in each event qualify for the Brazil Games, August 5-21.
 The controversial Gatlin remains unapologetic after serving two doping bans that have some officials and athletes questioning how the American is still allowed to compete in light of the added scrutiny directed at Russian athletes because of suspicions about that country’s anti-doping program.
 Gatlin has never admitted to doping, saying that a 2006 failed test was the result of a massage therapist’s rubbing testosterone cream on his legs. He also tested positive in 2001 for an amphetamine. He served a four-year ban, returning to the scene in 2010.
 Alexander Zhukov, Russia’s Olympic committee president, took a swipe at Gatlin and Gay during a recent Olympic summit in Switzerland, questioning the fairness of letting them compete in Rio de Janeiro while some Russian athletes who have never tested positive might not. Like Gatlin, former world champion Gay was suspended for doping in 2013.
 More than 100 athletes will qualify for the Rio Games by the end of the US trials on July 10. The American track and field team is traditionally the biggest by size across all sports.
 In 2012, the USA topped the medal table with nine gold among 28 total medals.  The US also led the medal standings at the Beijing Worlds with 18, but Jamaica and Kenya grabbed more golds.
 “The US trials are going to be a dogfight,” Gatlin said earlier this month.
Eldoret, Kenya: World champion Vivian Cheruiyot booked her ticket to Rio Games while Olympic silver medalist Sally Kipyego became the first major scalp in the two-day Kenyan Olympic trials which kicked off yesterday.
Kipyego trailed in sixth position in the women’s 10,000m, while Cheruiyot won the race in 31:36.40 after virtually running alone for eight laps with Betsy Saina in second (32:04.66) and Gladys Chepsir third in 32:17.13.
 US-based Kipyego, who won the 2012 Olympics silver, admitted she managed a below-par performance at the Kipchoge Keino Stadium in this athletics-mad North Rift Valley town, some 350km north west of the east African nation’s capital Nairobi.
 “Today wasn’t the best for me. Obviously, I wanted to make the team to Rio, but I was not physically there. I don’t know what happened, and I am disappointed,” said the 30-year-old nursing graduate from Texas Tech.
 “That is life. Sometimes you have a good day, sometimes you have a bad day, today happens to be the bad day. Tomorrow I will do morning run and continue with life.