9.77

Merely five years after he took up running, Jamaica’s Asafa Powell has earned the title of world’s fastest man.

The soft-spoken 22-year-old on Tuesday set a world record of 9.77 seconds for the 100 meters, trimming one-hundredth of a second off the time Tim Montgomery ran in Paris in September 2002. Powell’s performance on the Athens Olympic track, where last year he finished fifth at the Summer Games in 9.94 seconds, capped a meteoric rise for a would-be electrical engineer who took to the track only to emulate an older brother.

Powell flew out of the blocks with a wind-legal tailwind of 1.6 meters per second and was never challenged. His time, initially displayed as 9.78 seconds but rounded down to 9.77, is subject to ratification by the International Assn. of Athletics Federations.

Aziz Zakari of Ghana was second in 9.99 and another Jamaican, Michael Frater, was third in 10.04.

“I knew that I could do it,” said Powell, who also has the second- and third-fastest times this season, 9.84 at the Jamaican Invitational meet in May and 9.85 at Ostrava, Czech Republic, on June 9. “If you ask me what I can do more this year, you will just have to wait until the end of this year’s season to see.”

Powell, the youngest of six sons born to husband-and-wife preachers, has become the man to watch the last two seasons.

The 6-foot-2, 188-pound sprinter, whose brother, Donovan, ran for Texas Christian and Jamaica’s 400-meter relay team at the Sydney Olympics, ran faster than 10 seconds nine times last year. That’s once more than Maurice Greene, who preceded Montgomery as the world-record holder with a 9.79 in Athens in 1999. Shawn Crawford of the U.S. had six sub-10 times in 2004 and Athens gold medalist Justin Gatlin had five, including a triumphant 9.85 last Aug. 22.

“I am very happy that in my second presence here in Greece, I achieved this performance,” Powell told reporters in Athens. “It is amazing that after Maurice Greene that I also have achieved a world record in this stadium.”

Although Powell seems to have come from nowhere, he reached the summit fast. And unlike many other Caribbean runners who left home to train -- a list that includes Athens triple-medalist Veronica Campbell, Donovan Bailey, Linford Christie and the late Lennox Miller -- Powell has thrived in Jamaica under coach Stephen Francis.

“I saw it coming last year,” said John Smith, who coached Greene to 100-meter gold at Sydney and bronze at Athens. “You see a young man like him, when you’ve worked with someone of that caliber you know it’s a matter of when he’s going to break the world record, not if he’s going to.

“I expect him to run faster but I also expect him to have a lot of company, and I have two guys, Maurice Greene and Leonard Scott, who were excited by it. They had a good practice [Tuesday]. We can’t wait to race against him. To Asafa I say, ‘Congratulations, and we’ll be looking for you.’ ”

Greene issued a statement commending Powell, who beat him last season in London and Zurich, Switzerland. “Asafa has been running fast times all year,” Greene said on the website of the Irvine-based HSI track group. “I look forward to competing against him later this year.”

Powell’s record averts a potentially embarrassing situation for the sport because Montgomery has been accused of doping violations by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in connection with the BALCO scandal. Laboratory owner Victor Conte has said he supplied Montgomery with performance-enhancing drugs as part of “Project World Record,” a plan to help Montgomery set a world standard.

Montgomery has never tested positive for banned substances but faces a lifetime ban and possible deletion of his mark from the record books if he loses his appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport. His record has long been deemed suspect because he has not come close to matching it.

Powell will next run in the Jamaican championships, with an eye on the world championships in Helsinki, Finland, in August.

“I did my best,” he said Tuesday. “It feels great to be the fastest man of the world.”

Elliott reported from Los Angeles.