ATHENS, Greece -- To win the Olympic gold medal in the 100 meters, Lauryn Williams will have to overcome the poor starts that have hindered her in recent months.

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To address that, she and her coach, Amy Deem, are doing ... nothing.

Not directly, anyway.

Deem is convinced that Williams' flaw in her starts is not technical but mental.

"She had gotten to the point where she was just thinking too much about it," Deem said. "She needs to learn how to overcome her nervousness. She keeps talking about her starts, and I want her to talk about something else."

Williams, a Rochester native who opens competition in her primary event tomorrow at Olympic Stadium, is 10-4 in 100-meter races in 2004. She owns the second-fastest time in the world this year at 10.97 seconds. She won her first NCAA championship as a junior at the University of Miami, and she took second at the U.S. Olympic trials.

But she and those closest to her find it difficult not to look back and wonder how much better she might have fared if not for a tendency to stumble or sputter off the blocks.

The U.S. trials, a month ago in Sacramento, Calif., provided examples of her best and worst.

She registered the fastest time of anyone in the preliminary round with a flawless race of 11.13 seconds. Deem, also Williams' coach at Miami, and others called it perhaps the most precise run of her life.

In the semifinal and final, though, she started awkwardly and needed to use her extraordinary finishing kick to pass several runners and narrowly place in the top three of each race.

"It was worse in the final than in the semi," Deem said. "She just kind of froze, and she has done that at other points this year. She's there thinking about trying to make everything happen in the first 10 meters."

That is why Deem and Williams have gone out of their way to discuss other aspects of the race in their practices since arriving in Europe three weeks ago.

"Amy's been talking more about the whole event," Williams said. "I know I'm a little too focused on the starts, and she's been trying to tell me I've had good starts this year and that I'll go back to that if I just stop panicking. Just because I had a bad start at the trials ... well, I've had good starts this year, too."

Both have been happy with the starts in recent meets and practices. Williams took fifth in her European tuneup races, in London and Zurich, but she and Deem are blaming those lackluster results on the travel and time change.

Deem has not tinkered with any aspect of Williams' technique.

"We've really just been sticking to the same things we've been doing," Williams said. "You don't want to make too many changes when you've got a big race coming up. We're just focusing on little technical things."

Most of Deem's focus has been on making sure Williams is rested and that her training schedule allows for maximum efficiency this weekend. Already, she has run in many more races this year than she had expected when her lone goal was winning the NCAA title.

To boot, she will have to run the 100 four times in two days, something she could not recall having done previously. The first two rounds are tomorrow, the semifinal and final Saturday.

"I'm aware of the fact that I have had a long season, and I might take that into account for my races that would come after the Olympics," Williams said. "But right now, I feel pretty good."

Deem said she has been impressed with Williams' general demeanor.

"What I've liked is that Lauryn is very excited and confident," she said. "The night after the trials, I remember that she was just ecstatic to be on the team. She told me 'I made it. I actually did it.' But the very next day, she was mad because she felt she was the best runner in the race and should have won. So, I said, 'OK, let's get back to work.' "

On everything but those starts, of course.

Williams is optimistic that the trouble is behind her.

"I'm better now," she said. "I think I just have to calm down, relax, get it together, and the start will come by itself."