A decathlon record but more U.S. relay woe

BEIJING — For this world championships year, 2015, the U.S. 4x100 men’s and women’s relay teams had one objective, and one objective only: get the stick around. Really. The trick was not to fall prey to the dropsies, oopsies and bumps in the night that have for far too long at major meets have plagued American entries. With several young runners on the track and and the idea of using the 2015 worlds as an end unto itself but also a means of preparing for the 2016 Rio Olympics, the verdict Saturday: oops, again!

At first, it appeared the Americans had pulled second-place finishes in the 4x1, both times behind the Jamaicans.

The U.S. women turned in a season-best effort.

But then the U.S. men were disqualified for a gruesome-looking third pass, Tyson Gay to Mike Rodgers -- out of the zone.

To win at this level, everything has to go right. It's very complex. But at the same time, very simple. Veronica Campbell-Brown, the Jamaican veteran, offered the summation of what they do right and the Americans consistently find a struggle: "We executed well, we finished healthy and we won."

This next-to-last night of the 2015 worlds offered great performances not just on the track but in the field events as well.

In the decathlon, the American Ashton Eaton went into the last event, the 1500, needing a 4:18.25 or better to break his own world record, the 9039 points he put up at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials in Eugene, Oregon.

Beyond pride and records, don’t think he didn’t want the record, even if this is a non-Olympic year; it would mean, given bonuses and roll-overs, six-figures plus.

His wife, Brianne Theisen-Eaton, the Canadian silver medalist heptathlete here and at the Moscow 2013 worlds as well, tweeted about an hour before he would run:

Last talk with @AshtonJEaton before his 1500m. He said, "Bri, I'm nervous." 1 hour until go time. 4:18.25 or faster and it's a new WR.

— BrianneTheisen-Eaton (@btheiseneaton) August 29, 2015

To go 4:18, Eaton would have needed to keep to this pace: 1:08 at 400 meters; 2:17, 800; 3:26. 1200; 4:18, finish.

In Eugene in 2012, Eaton had run a personal-best 4:14.48.

Michael Schrader of Germany hit 400 in 1:09.34, Eaton back in the pack; Larbi Bourrada of Algeria 800 in 2:21.56, Eaton one step behind; Bourrada at 1200, stretching it out, 3:31.61; Eaton ran hard down the homestretch, chasing Bourrada, who crossed in 4:16.61.

Eaton, 4:17.52.

Clear by 73-hundredths of a second.

Eaton fell to the track, then got up and staggered toward the sidelines, hands on knees, before climbing over the rail to give his wife a hug. The picture of exhaustion, he literally needed help getting back over the railing.

The new world record: 9045 points.

His performance included a decathlon event world record 45-flat Friday in the 400; Bill Toomey had run 45.63 in 1968.

He said later about Brianne, "She’s — it can’t be summed up in words but I now I would not have done what I did today without her."

He also said about the emotion that welled up after his victory, "The older I get," and he's 27, "the more I realize we're making choices to have the experience we're having. Those choices involve giving up a lot of stuff.

"You just feel like you miss a lot, friends, family ... it is just an accumulation of those feelings, and when you do something you just realize, I am doing it for a reason, and when that reason manifests itself it's pretty emotional."

Canada’s Damian Warner took decathlon silver, 8695, a national record; Rico Freimuth of Germany third, in a personal-best 8561.

"When Ashton broke the world record, the feeling on my skin was unbelievable," Freimuth said, adding, "I told him he is the greatest athlete."

Breaking the world record by less than that one second carried with it a slight irony. At the 2014 world indoors in Sopot, Poland, Eaton missed breaking his own heptathlon world record in the final event, the 800, by — one second.

"That was a gutsy 1500, huh?!" Harry Marra, who coaches Eaton husband and wife, said later -- and the results both put up underscore what a world-class coach that Marra, after many years in the sport, continues to be.

Eaton said that before the 1500, "I was doubting myself in the restroom, thinking, I don't know if I can run that." Then he thought, "I have a lot of people who believe in me … and they were all saying, you can do it. I was like, yeah, think I can."

Earlier Saturday evening, Britain’s Mo Farah completed the distance triple double, winning the men’s 5k with a ferocious kick to cross in 13:50.38. He won the 10k earlier in the meet.

With the victory, Farah became the 5 and 10k champion at the 2012 Olympics, 2013 worlds and, now, here.

The winning time, 13:50.38, was the slowest in the history of the world championships, dating to 1983. The previous slowest: Bernard Lagat, 13:45.87, at Osaka, Japan, in 2007.

Farah ran the last 400 meters in 52.7 seconds, the last 200 in 26.5. "The important thing," he said, "is to win the race, and I did that."

Americans in the 5k: 5-6-7.

For the first time ever at a world championships, the women’s high jump saw six athletes go over 1.99 meters, or 6 feet, 6-1/4 inches.

Russia’s Maria Kuchina won at 2.01, 6-7, the 0ft-injured Croatian star, Blanka Vlašić, taking second, also at 2.01 (she had one earlier miss, at 1.92, 6-3 1/2), tearfully blowing kisses to the crowd after her last jump.

Vlašić now has two worlds golds and two silvers; she took silver at the Beijing 2008 Games. This was Kuchina’s first worlds; she registered an impressive six first-time clearances Saturday before being stymied at 2.01. Another Russian, Anna Chicherova, the London 2012 gold and Beijing 2008 bronze medalist, took third, also 2.01 but with two earlier misses.

"Today I showed that I am still there, that it is not over," Vlašić said.

Since 2003, meanwhile, there had been 13 major sprint relay competitions before Saturday night — Olympics, world championships and, the last two years, World Relays.

At those 13, U.S. men had botched it up — drops, collisions, falls, hand-offs outside the zone — seven times.

Add in a retroactive doping-related DQ from the Edmonton 2001 worlds, and the scoreboard said eight of 14. Dismal.

U.S. women: five no-go’s going back to 2003, four in the sprints, one collision in the 4x1500 in the Bahamas in 2014.

There’s a women’s retroactive Edmonton 2001 doping-related DQ, too. So that would make it six.

It’s not as if the athletes, coaches and, for that matter, administrators at USA Track & Field are not aware of the challenge.

Indeed, after the 2008 Summer Games here at the Bird’s Nest, USATF commissioned a thorough report on the matter, dubbed Project 30; in those Olympics, both men’s and women’s 4x1 relays dropped the baton on the exchange to the anchor, Torri Edwards to Lauryn Williams, and Darvis Patton to Tyson Gay.

The Project 30 report identified a host of institutional and structural challenges, and potential reforms, including more training camps.

What followed that next summer, at the Berlin 2009 world championships: the women’s 4x1 team DNF’d in the heats,  the men’s 4x1 effort got DQ’d in the rounds.

It hasn’t, of course, been all bad.

At the 2012 London Games, the U.S. women 4x1 ran to gold and a world-record, 40.82.

The U.S. relay program has this year been under the direction of Dennis Mitchell, the Florida-based former sprint champion who is now coach of, among others, Justin Gatlin.

He is so in charge that when, at a pre-meet news conference, U.S. team coaches Delethea Quarles (women) and Edrick Floréal (men) were asked about who might run in the relays, each said, it’s up to Mitchell.

It wouldn’t be a championships without some measure of, ah, observation from many quarters — fans, agents, press reports — about which Americans are doing what, or not, in which relay.

For instance, Tori Bowie, the bronze medalist here in the women’s 100, in 10.86, didn't run. Why?

Bowie is sponsored by adidas; the U.S. team by Nike. At the Diamond League meet earlier this summer in Monaco, to run in the relays you had to wear team gear. Some adidas athletes chose not to -- meaning they chose not to run. For emphasis, the U.S. team did not say, don’t run because you are sponsored by adidas; indeed, the U.S. team said please do run, in national-team gear.

The predictable upshot, this quote from Bowie’s agent, Kimberly Felton: “Of course, she would love to run the relay and support her country.”

Well, sure. But a little context, please, because, as always, things just aren’t black and white.

In Monaco, Bowie attended one practice, according to USATF. Her representatives then informed USATF she would not be competing there and would not be part of the relay pool going forward, including the camp in Japan. To not stay part of the program — that was all from Bowie’s side.

This statement, in full, earlier this week from USATF:

“Our men’s and women’s sprinters were invited to Team USA relay camp in Monaco in mid-July and to Team USA’s overall World Championships training camp in Narita, Japan, this month. In order to ensure quality relay performances and success in Beijing, athletes were required to attend both camps and to actively participate in all practices. With a relatively high number of new, talented sprinters emerging this year, these practices were especially important for practicing exchanges and determining relay position. Tori Bowie’s representatives informed us that she would not compete in Monaco and later said she would not be moving forward with the relay process or attending camp in Narita. We moved forward, practicing with and planning for the athletes in attendance. We look forward to our relays taking the track on Saturday.”

If this all seems like something new, consider:

At those Osaka 2007 worlds, the American sprinter Carmelita Jeter won bronze in the 100, in 11.02, behind Jamaica’s Campbell (not yet married) and another American, Lauryn Williams, both in 11.01. Jeter ran in the 4x1 relay heats; U.S. coaches opted not to use her in the final, believing a different line-up gave the Americans their best chance; the U.S. women’s 4x1 team, no Jeter, won in 41.98.

In Saturday’s prelims, the U.S. women went 42 flat, second only to Jamaica, which went a world-leading 41.84.

The U.S.: English Gardner, Allyson Felix, Jenna Prandini, Jasmine Todd.

Jamaica: Sherone Simpson, Natasha Morrison, Kerron Stewart, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.

In the finals, the Americans put out the same line-up; the Jamaicans, Campbell-Brown, Natasha Morrison, Elaine Thompson and Fraser-Pryce.

Felix ran a big second leg. But the Jamaicans had the lead by the time the stick got to Fraser-Pryce. Game over: the Jamaicans won in a world championship-record 41.07, second-fastest time in history, the Americans next in a season-best 41.68. Trinidad and Tobago pulled third, in a national-record 42.03.

On the men’s side:

At the World Relays in May in the Bahamas, the Americans figured out a formula for taking out the Jamaicans: get a big-enough lead so that even Usain Bolt, who ran anchor, couldn’t catch up. In the Bahamas, given a big lead by Justin Gatln and Tyson Gay, running legs two and three, Ryan Bailey held off Bolt for the victory.

Bailey is not here; he false started in his 100 heat at the U.S. nationals and so did not qualify; he then pulled out of the 200.

He would be missed.

In the Bahamas, the U.S. ran 37.38, and Bailey afterward made a throat-slash motion, emphasizing no fear of the Jamaicans.

The U.S. four here: Treyvon Bromell, Gatlin, Gay, Rodgers.

Jamaica in the prelims: Nesta Carter, Asafa Powell, Rasheed Dwyer, Nickel Ashmeade.

Prelim times: Jamaica 37.41, U.S. 37.91.

For the finals, the U.S. lineup stayed the same; for Jamaica, Carter, Powell, Ashmeade, Bolt.

Before it all got underway, Bolt did a little dance on the track, laughing and smiling, as always.

The Americans ran in Lane 6, Jamaicans in 4.

Inexplicably, Bromell almost missed the start; he was just settling into the blocks when the gun went off. He recovered and executed a slick pass to Gatlin, who, again, ran a huge leg two.

But the gap closed, and Bolt powered to victory in 37.36, best in the world this year.

The U.S. appeared to finished second in 37.77 despite that ugly-looking third pass, Gay to Rodgers. Rodgers actually stopped short for just a moment to try to be sure to grab the bright pink stick in the zone.

Rodgers said, "I knew that I had to slow it down a bit because I still did not have the baton. I wanted to stay in the zone."

Job not done.

More practice, more camps -- maybe more Ryan Bailey, it would appear, for 2016.

Scoreboard for the U.S. men since 2001 in the sprints: 15 races, nine fails. That's a failure rate of 60 percent.

Take out the 2001 doping matter and since 2003 it's eight fails-for-14. Still not good.

"It was very hard to get focused because of all the noise," Gay would say later, an odd thing for a veteran like him to say, adding a moment later, "We are all very upset because of the disqualification."

China, to a great roar, was moved up to second from third, in 38.01. Gatlin earlier in the week had noted the emergence of Chinese sprinters, including Bingtian Su, with a personal-best 9.99 in the 100. It was Su's 26th birthday Saturday, and after the race the crowd at the Bird's Nest serenaded him with a rousing version of "Happy Birthday."

Canada was jumped to third, 38.13.

For Bolt, this relay made for yet another championships triple -- with the exception of his false start at the Daegu 2011 worlds, and that relay in May in the Bahamas, he has won everything at a major meet, Olympics or world championships, since 2008: 100, 200 and the 4x1.

Bolt, later, on the Americans: "It is called pressure. They won the World Relays and the pressure was on them. I told you -- I am coming back here and doing my best."

Echoed Powell, "We came out very strong and I think the U.S. wanted it too bad. They made mistakes," he said, adding,  "We got the stick around, and we won."

Cut Justin Gatlin some slack

BEIJING — Dear friends and colleagues in the media, especially many of you in the British press: back off. Cut Justin Gatlin some real slack.

Instead of insight and the pursuit of the truth, what far too many of you have delivered instead is a simplistic caricature of events amid the 2015 world track and field championships that, regrettably, has led to the capacity to incite.

This is not good, not good at all, and if something serious happens — the warning shot was a heckler calling out Gatlin’s mom, of all people, while he was on the medal stand Monday night — it’s on you, each and all of you, in your repeated exposition of a binary “good” and “evil” narrative to the men’s 100 meters.

You don’t think such a thing is possible? Review violent events in tennis. All it takes is one crazy person.

Two nights after the epic 100, won by Bolt over Gatlin by one-hundredth of a second, the two were back center stage Tuesday night for the heats of the 200, Bolt winning his race in 20.28, Gatlin his in 20.19, both jogging to the finish.

Amid the action on the track, Gatlin’s agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, has said that Gatlin is considering a boycott of the British media. Candidly, such action would be fully justified. Generally speaking, their treatment of Gatlin has not just been unfair; it has been mean, indeed venomous.

If much of the British press has collectively decided they have no obligation to be fair to Gatlin — never mind the possibility, no matter how remote, of complimentary — then why would he have an obligation to interact with them?

As Nehemiah said after Sunday's race, in the tunnel underneath the Bird's Nest, "I feel badly about it because the human element is presenting itself in an ugly way. It’s really unfair."

Gatlin is the Athens 2004 Olympic 100 gold medalist, and Nehemiah said, "I just marvel at how prior to his ban and return, everybody loved him. He is a nice guy. He has never changed. Certain people in the media world paint him as an ogre. I’m like -- do you even know this man?"

To quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., in a different context but with words so apt here: "A boycott is never an end within itself. It is merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor but the end is reconciliation, the end is redemption."

As the great Jamaican sprint champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce put it after her victory Monday in the women's 100: “My message always is: no matter where you are from, no matter which past you have, it is all about your future and your goals.”

In this instance, an elemental truth ought to be so patently obvious: we do not live in a world where ogres are real, where we have to make up cautionary fairy tales masquerading as "morality plays." The truth itself is good enough, and the truth is that we live in a world that is not binary, not black and white. We live in a world of multilayered grays.

To portray Bolt as “good” and Gatlin, twice banned for doping, as “evil,” is thoroughly and dramatically irresponsible.

Four other guys ran in the 100 semifinals with time off for doping matters: Tyson Gay, Mike Rodgers, Femi Ogunode and Bolt’s own teammate, Asafa Powell. The Jamaicans named Powell a team captain! None of them got anywhere near the same level of vitriol Gatlin did. Why? Because Gatlin is faster?

To be fair: blame hardly rests on everyone in the British media. That would be overly broad. Sean Ingle of the Guardian, for instance, has repeatedly been moderate and straightforward in his reporting, including this report from the 100 final:

"It was inevitable that some would hail this a victory not just for Bolt but for clean athletics. It was understandable too, given Gatlin’s past – which includes a four-year ban for taking the banned steroid testosterone – and his startling present, which has seen him set personal bests in the 100m and 200m at 33.

"The danger is that it is both simplistic and lets other athletes off the hook. Remember 66 athletes at these world championships have served doping bans – including four in the 100m final. One victory from an athlete who has never tested positive will not change that."

This acknowledgement, too, from Tom Fordyce, the BBC's chief sports writer: "This was never good vs evil, as some tried to bill it in advance. Gatlin is a dope cheat, not a serial killer or child abuser."

Let's compare and contrast:

British legend Steve Cram, who has a lifetime of experience in the sport, both as athlete and broadcaster, shouting on the air for the BBC about Bolt’s victory as the Jamaican crossed the line, “Usain Bolt — it’s very, very tight but I think he has done it! He has saved his title, he’s saved his reputation, he may even have saved his sport. A super-hero, if he has won it. He is looking up. Usain Bolt, three times world champion!

“I’m looking around the whole stadium. I’m looking around the media tribunes,” meaning press row. “The former athletes that work in the media. Everybody on their feet.  The result that everybody wanted, except Justin Gatlin, I guess. How could we ever doubt [Bolt]?”

There is so much hyperbole there one hardly knows where to start.

Elsewhere in its pages, The Guardian quoted Cram in the second paragraph of another story on the race, under this headline: “Usain Bolt beats Justin Gatlin to 100m gold in ‘clash of good against evil’ "

More, meantime, from a different wing of the purportedly sober BBC:

How great is this photo of Usain Bolt with Justin Gatlin in the background? @usainbolt takes gold #BoltGatlin pic.twitter.com/Amg8eE57Sv

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) August 23, 2015

No cheering in the press box? Here was the crew from BBC Live 5 Sport:  

The men's 100m final as seen by our #Beijing2015 team #bbcathletics #BoltGatlin pic.twitter.com/kSy5HHymT6 — BBC 5 live Sport (@5liveSport) August 23, 2015

The Telegraph, meanwhile, gave play to this tweet from the British 800-meter runner Michael Rimmer, who ran a 1:48.7 in the first round and was out:

YEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!! Fucking suck on that GATLIN!!!!!! Clean, mean, winning machine.. @usainbolt

— Michael Rimmer (@MichaelRimmer8) August 23, 2015

The Telegraph, further: “This was a victory that touched a nerve across the sporting world and beyond. Athletics had its hero back and it was time to rejoice.”

The Daily Mail, the day before the race, published a story that said, in the opening paragraph: “ … stand by for sport as a freak show.” In the next paragraph, this reference: “… it’s Usain Bolt against the bearded lady, otherwise known as Justin Gatlin.” Next paragraph: “If Gatlin wins, it will be a terrible indictment of a sport that seems utterly at a loss about how to police itself. If Bolt wins, it will merely reinforce the idea that he is all that stands between athletics and oblivion.”

In its report on the race itself, under a headline that called Gatlin a “drugs cheat,” the Daily Mail declared that “by defeating the unashamed American, banned twice for drugs offenses and utterly repentant, [Bolt] landed a significant blow for clean athletes rallying against the dopers who steal their medals and in turn their money.”

The truth: referring to Gatlin, Nehemiah, speaking in the tunnel under the stadium after the 100 final, stressing, again, "He never stole any money. When he got banned, he never ran another race.”

Let us all be clear:

The best — the very best — that any of us can say about Bolt, who has been a charming and irrepressible champion since his first Olympic gold here at the Bird’s Nest seven years ago, is that he has never tested positive.

We cannot — repeat, not — say with certainty that he is “clean.”

For his part, Gatlin is not “evil.” That is over-the-top ridiculous.

Gatlin is a good guy. He got tagged twice for doping positives. The first, in 2001, came when he was 19, and was for Adderall, the prescription medicine he was taking for the attention-deficit disorder with which he had been diagnosed 10 years before.

The second, in 2006, was for testosterone, and under circumstances that have never been fully explained. The evidence in the matter does not corroborate the story that a massage therapist rubbed steroid cream on Gatlin; that, according to a read of the record, was first suggested by Gatlin’s then-coach Trevor Graham, whose credibility as a central figure in the BALCO matter has to be viewed dimly.

A more likely, if unproven, explanation is that the positive test came from a shot or a pill delivered while Gatlin was under the direct watch of Graham and assistant coach Randall Evans.

This unequivocal acknowledgment: the rules make it plain that Gatlin was liable for what’s in him, however it got there.

The rules were followed. Gatlin was sent away, into the wilderness, for four long years.

A read of the transcripts in the 2007 hearing that followed the 2006 test makes plain — from investigators to the arbitrators themselves — the belief that Gatlin did not knowingly ingest anything illicit.

When he found out he had tested positive, moreover, Gatlin immediately sought to help federal investigator Jeff Novitzky in Novitzky’s investigation of BALCO, agreeing to make undercover phone calls to Graham.

Yet the dozen or so calls Gatlin made got him no credit in his doping case — the rule at the time said that any such “substantial assistance” had to lead directly to an anti-doping agency “discovering or establishing” doping by another person.

Since that didn’t happen, Gatlin got no break.

You can maybe understand why that might -- to those who have long supported Gatlin -- seem a disconnect. Gatlin is a good guy who, when notified he had a problem, tried his very best to help the good guys do the right thing. And what did that get him for his effort? Nothing.

How does that ring in the balance of equities?

The thing about rules is this — without reference to real life, rules can easily become unjust.

This is why the call for lifetime bans is so tiresome.

Sports officials know this full well. Such bans come loaded with an assortment of challenges, including a violation of basic human rights. The International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, reminded one and all of this very thing just last Friday, at a news conference here.

We live in the real world, everyone, not a world of judgment and moral high-mindedness where a young man with transgressions in his teens and early 20s has to live, re-live and keep living the past.

Gatlin, again, is now 33.

Who among us has not done things at 19, or 24, that they wish they could replay? Where is that understanding?

Where in the coverage was any attempt to portray the heartbreak Gatlin felt in 2006, and thereafter?

Or the courage it took to remain true to one’s self for the long years he was out of the sport, then the several more it took to build back to world-class speed?

Or Gatlin’s incredibly strong family ties — how his mother and father have been with him throughout the ups, the downs, everything?

That’s also why the heckling of his mother was so very wrong.

As Gatlin said Sunday night when he was asked why he went moments after the race to see his mother, Jeanette, “I didn’t say anything to my mother. Win or lose, that was my plan, to go embrace her. For the simple fact that my mother and my father,” Willie, a Vietnam vet, “have been through my ups and downs with me. For them, it has been a journey. It has been a journey for me. I’m so happy they can be at every championship I have been at. I love them. I love them.”

Where was that? Anywhere?

Or did it cut against the easy caricature of Gatlin as “evil” to write that, in fact, he is a real person, and that each and all of us are on a journey in life fraught with mistakes.

Let the words of Dr. King, as ever, ring out. The beauty — for Justin Gatlin, for all of us — is that life also offers opportunity and redemption.

Kenya super, US again kryptonite in steeple

BEIJING — Amid keen anticipation that this would finally be the year an American man would medal in the steeplechase at the world championships, Evan Jager headed into the bell lap in the lead.

And then came a fleet of Kenyans. Jager could not keep up. The Kenyans went 1-2-3-4, the master Ezekiel Kemboi winning in 8:11.28.

You’d say it was incredible but, for about 30 years, this is what the Kenyans have been doing in the steeplechase.

The Americans could take some consolation in a 5-6 finish — Daniel Huling passing a weary Jager down the homestretch for fifth.

Or you might say that the steeplechase is, for some inexplicable reason, the American track and field version of kryptonite, for generations now warding off any and all big-meet success.

Or it’s like the summer sport version of biathlon. Lots and lots of smart people, hard work, real promise — and then, regrettably, nothing.

To quote Bruce Springsteen, how can a poor man stand such times and live?

“Our plan was to go for gold, silver and bronze,” the second-place finisher, Conselsus Kipruto, said afterward. “I am happy that I was able to assist my team. I sacrificed myself for the team. We have a lot of experience but we are still young. Now we want to prepare well for the Olympic Games next year.”

Brimin Kipruto, in third, said, “We could not hope for a better result. I am so proud of my country and my team.”

In other action Monday, the U.S. woman recorded a best-ever finish in the 10k, 3-4-6, Emily Infeld going by Molly Huddle at the line for third; Shalane Flanagan took sixth. Infeld’s third matched the best American worlds finish in the event, Kara Goucher’s Osaka 2007 bronze.

Goucher may be in line for an upgrade to silver for that 2007 race. The second-place finisher, Turkey’s Elvan Abeylegesse, has been linked in recent weeks to doping reports.

Kenya’s Vivian Cheruiyot took gold Monday night, in 31:41.31, Ethiopia’s Gelete Burka silver, 46-hundredths back. Huddle appeared to celebrate too early, raising her arms as she approached the line, Infeld kept going. Infeld: 31:43.49, Huddle nine-hundredths behind.

Colombia’s Caterine Ibarguen affirmed her standing as the world’s best female triple jumper, winning in 14.09 meters, or 46 feet, 2-3/4 inches.

The men’s pole vault saw a shocker: 21-year-old Canada’s Shawn Barber, the 2015 Pan-Am Games champion who attends the University of Akron, winning with a jump of 5.90 meters, or 19 4-1/4. Germany’s Raphael Holzdeppe, the Moscow 2013 champion, took second, at the same height. Renaud Lavillenie of France, who has for the past several years dominated the event, finished in a three-way tie for third, at 5.80, or 19 0-1/4.

And, finally, in the women’s 100, the stellar Jamaican Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, twice an Olympic champion, the reigning world champion at 60 meters, 100, 200 and in the 4x100 relay, did it again. She overpowered a strong field to win in 10.76, green hair flowing behind her, right arm up in triumph as she crossed the line.

The former heptathlon standout Dafne Schippers of Holland took second, in a national-record 10.81. American Tori Bowie got third, in 10.86.

Fraser-Pryce in the 100 at major championships: 2008, 1. 2009, 1. 2011, 4. 2012, 1. 2013, 1. 2015, 1.

"My message always is: no matter where you are from, no matter which past you have, it is all about your future and your goals," Fraser-Pryce said afterward.

A few moments later, she said, "When I ran the heats, I remembered when back in 2008 at the Olympic Games, I was 21 years old -- I expected nothing then. And I came out here tonight -- with a gold medal. Every championship is different. I am really excited."

Two notes of intrigue from the field in that women’s 100: the Jamaican Veronica Campbell-Brown, with seven medals across four Olympics, including three golds, finished fourth, in 10.91. And Nigeria’s Blessing Okagbare, who excels in both the sprints and the long jump, ended up last, in 11.02.

In the American camp, meanwhile, there had been such considerable hope before the men’s steeplechase that Monday, finally, be the night.

Some history:

With the exception of two wins — Paris 2003, Helsinki 2005 — by Saif Saaeed Shaheen representing Qatar, a Kenyan runner has won every worlds steeplechase since Tokyo 1991.

For those not up to speed on the details of the sport, Shaheen was born in — Keiyo District, Kenya. As Stephen Cherono, he ran for Kenya until 2002; he still holds the world record, 7:53.63, set in September 2004 in Brussels.

Every year, worlds or Olympics, the Kenyans seemingly just re-load.

Jairus Birech came into Monday night’s final as the world No. 1, winner of the final six Diamond League steeples in 2014 and three more this year. He has a 7:58.83 to his name.

Consensus Kipruto, the Moscow 2013 silver medalist, had been the only guy to have beaten Birech this summer — in London on July 25. He’s only 20 years old.

Brimin Kipruto is the 2008 Olympic champion (he fell on the sixth lap in London in 2012). Four years ago, at the Monaco Diamond League meet, he missed the world record by one-hundredth of a second. This year, he had run 8:10.09, No. 5 in the world.

And then there is Kemboi.

Kemboi is now 33. He used to be Shaheen’s apprentice.

But for nearly a decade he has been the master of the steeplechase.

Kemboi finished second at the worlds, behind Shaneen, at Helsinki and Paris and then again, behind another Kenyan, Brimin Kipruto, at the Osaka 2007 worlds.

He won at the 2004 Athens Olympics (8:05.81, a Kenyan sweep, Kemboi, Brimin Kipruto, Paul Kipsiele Koech).

Kemboi finished seventh in 2008 here at the Bird’s Nest, his worst international performance.

At major meets since, Kemboi has since been virtually unchallenged — winning the last three world championships, in Berlin 2009 (8:00.43), Daegu 2011 (8:14.85) and Moscow 2013 (8:06.01).

He also won at the London 2012 Summer Games (8:18.56).

Kemboi is not just a winner. He is what you might gently call a character.

After he won in Moscow, for instance, amid a dance-filled victory lap, he showed off his Mohawk haircut and a message on his T-shirt that said his victory was dedicated to the Kenyan president and deputy, “my heroes/my kings/I love Kenya.”

In Daegu, he partially shaved his hair. After he won, he threw his singlet into the stands and took his victory lap with the Kenyan flag tied, sweatshirt-style, around his waist.

In 2002, after winning his first major medal, a silver at the Commonwealth Games, Kemboi was so moved that he named his son (he is now the father of two boys) after the venue: Manchester.

And so on.

As a retort of sorts, Jager has a blonde man-bun.

The Kenyan domination over the years in the steeplechase has been matched, if you will, by American futility.

The American medal record in the steeplechase at the Olympics — in all, five:

Silver, 1920 (Patrick Flynn); bronze, 1932 (Joe McCluskey, and a historical note, in 1932 the race was 3460 meters long, not 3000); gold, 1952 (Horace Ashenfelter, who worked for the FBI and beat the Soviet Vladimir Kazantsev for the win, the only U.S. gold in the event); bronze, 1968 (George Young, behind two Kenyans); and bronze, 1984 (Brian Diemer, the winner, Julius Korir, of course Kenyan).

The American medal record at the world championships: zero.

Again, dating to the first world championships in Helsinki in 1983: zero.

Diemer took fourth at the edition in Rome in 1987.

Overall, before Monday night, Kenya at the worlds: 25 of 42 medals. United States: only seven guys to finish, ever, in the top eight.

As recently as four years ago, the United States did not qualify a single guy for the steeplechase final at Daegu.

Three guys then emerged:

Donn Cabral, the 2011 NCAA champ from Princeton; the next year, he dropped 12 seconds off his personal-best.

Dan Huling, 10 seconds off the final time qualifier in Daegu, endured a dismal two years — he didn’t break 8:20 from 2011 to 2013 — but came back strong this year. His last two races: 8:14 and 8:15.

Two years ago in Moscow, meanwhile, Jager took fifth.

In Paris earlier this summer, Jager set an American record, 8:00.45; he looked set to break eight minutes, saying afterward he thought he was on 7:56 pace, but while ahead fell over the last barrier.

The race is designed to be a physical and mental test. There are 28 hurdles, four each lap, and seven water jumps, one per lap. For those super-interested in the IAAF technical manual, the water depth at the barrier must — repeat, must — be 50 to 70 centimeters, 19.7 to 27.6 inches.

Why is the race called the “steeplechase”? Because, as the story goes, it was first run from the church steeple in one village to the church steeple in the next village.

Saturday’s heats underscored the different ways the race can play out — fast, slow, tactical or not.

— One, Conselsus Kipruto won in 8:41.41. Jager, fifth off the final turn, had to turn on the burners to finish second, one-tenth back. The European champion, France’s Yoann Kowal, took fourth — out of the finals.

If Jager had run just 15-hundredths of a second slower, he would have been out — watching the final on TV or somewhere.

— Two, a much-faster heat. The leaders reached two kilometers in 5:43.18, more than 20 seconds faster than heat one. Birech won, in 8:25.77, followed by Bilal Tabti of Algeria and Cabral.

— Three, Kemboi sat back and waited until the last 200 meters, then kicked to victory in 8:24.75, followed by Brahim Taleb of Morocco and Brimin Kipruto.

The strategy going into the final looked straightforward: four Kenyans against the one American, Jager.

They went through the first 1k in 2:49, Cabral second, Jager fourth, Conselsus Kipruto in front.

At 2k, it was Conselsus Kiputo at 5:36.77, Cabral 12th, Jager cruising along in the pack at 10th.

At the bell lap, it was 7:14.07, and Jager in front.

And then the Kenyans took off, as if lit by rocket fuel, and Jager faded.

Kemboi’s last lap made for what would have been an incredible stand-alone 400 hurdles. He sprinted to the finish in 8:11.28.

Consensus Kipruto took second, a tenth of a second back.

Sixteen-hundredths behind that, Brimin Kipruto.

Fourth: Birech, eight-hundredths out of the medals.

Jager could not keep up the pace. He slipped to sixth, 8:15.47.

Huling passed him down the homestretch. He grabbed fifth, in 8:14.39.

Afterward, Kemboi again wrapped the Kenyan flag around his waist and danced. Ever-so-briefly. And he kept his shirt on.

Kemboi now in major meets: 2003, 2. 2004, 1. 2005, 2. 2007, 2. 2008, 7. 2009, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2015: 1.

Huling would say later that his race aim was “sixth or seventh,” a medal “probably outside my talent level, my fitness level, obviously.

“So I wanted to run for sixth to seventh and if I did that and it gave me the opportunity to pick off someone, unfortunately, like Evan. I’m really gutted for him, I really wanted for him to get a medal. He probably spent a lot more energy to try and get a medal today. He probably had a better race than me.”

Jager, referring to the Kenyans, said, “Those guys are so freaking tough over the last lap, running extremely fast over barriers. It’s something that I haven’t figured out yet; I’m working on my entire career how to handle that. It’s definitely different than having a fast last lap in the flat race. It’s just a different element to it. There’s a reason why the Kenyans have won every single steeple world championships they’ve competed in the last 12-13 years. So it’s really tough. I have to figure out something for myself.”

He also said, "I’ll go back to the drawing board.”

Kemboi, meanwhile, got to bask in victory, as ever: “I am so happy about my fourth consecutive world title. It was a strong race. We maintained the pace but I never went in front — only [over] the last 400 meters.”

He also said about that killer kick, “On the last lap nobody could follow me. I will be celebrating tonight with my teammates.”

Can Justin Gatlin be a hero?

EUGENE, Oregon — It was 40 years ago Saturday — May 30, 1975 — that Steve Prefontaine crashed his gold 1973 MGB convertible on a curve here on Skyline Boulevard and died. He is by now legend, myth, icon and the man that America wants its track heroes to be. By all rights, amid this year’s running of the Prefontaine Classic, the guy who should be America’s track and field hero is Justin Gatlin. He won the 200 meters here Saturday in 19.68, eighth-fastest in history, a meet record. Gatlin’s challenge is not what he does between the lines. It’s what he says when he’s not performing. And how he handles himself, and his doping-related past.

This is all a reminder that this hero business is hard. And yet not so. A little humility and accountability, and knowing what to say at the right time, can go a long way.

Americans can be so forgiving. There is a deep well of forgiveness just waiting for Justin Gatlin if he can find it in himself to get to that place of honest redemption. When he was introduced here before the start of the 200, there were cheers, not boos. After the race, he spent a half-hour signing autographs and had to be dragged away to talk to reporters on deadline.

Is Justin Gatlin a hero? Can he be? What would it take to really, truly get him there?

What went down here in Eugene over the weekend is also a reminder of track and field’s niche role in the American scene, and how even an amazing meet like this year’s Pre Classic — which seemingly featured virtually every great track star in the world save Jamaica's Usain Bolt and Kenya's David Rudisha — is but a starting block.

Track and field has to be — and this is the aim of the organizers of the 2021 world championships in Eugene — a sport that goes through the winter and spring and into the summer and captures the public imagination, well beyond Hayward Field, beyond Eugene, beyond Portland, beyond Oregon.

It needs stories and stars.

On Saturday, a sell-out crowd of 13,278 at Hayward Field saw the likes of France’s Renaud Lavillenie, who tried three times Saturday to break the world record in the pole vault — 20 feet, 2 1/2 inches — on an injured shoulder, only to come up just short;  American Allyson Felix, who ran a sophisticated 50.05 to win the women’s 400; Granada’s Kirani James, who ran a breathtaking 43.95 to win the men’s 400; and, of course, the incomparable Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica, the multiple Olympic champion in the sprints, who won the women’s 100 in 10.81.

It needs the likes of Justin Gatlin.

Gatlin ought to be huge. Not just in track and field but as a breakout star. Like Prefontaine.

Last year, Gatlin did not lose a race. He is the 2004 100-meter champion. He is now back, at age 33, and running ridiculously fast.

At a Diamond League meet a few weeks ago, he ran a 9.74 in the 100 — his best-ever, and the fourth-fastest time of all time. Only Bolt (9.58 in 2009), American Tyson Gay (9.69, 2009), Jamaica's Yohan Blake (9.69, 2012) and another Jamaican, Asafa Powell (9.72, 2008), have run faster.

At the World Relays in the Bahamas earlier this month, Gatlin’s second leg in the 4x100 was so quick that even Bolt, running anchor, had no chance to catch Ryan Bailey, who took it home for the Americans.

You want to know why Nike recently gave Gatlin a new contract?

He wins.

Gatlin is a serious, legitimate, for-real threat to take out Bolt this August at the world championships in August and next year at the Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro.

Bolt — just for the record — runs for Puma.

All this has come for Gatlin, again, at age 33. He has two doping run-ins in his history. The first, in 2001, a positive test for amphetamines, would have led to a two-year ban; Gatlin proved, though, that since childhood he had been taking meds for attention deficit disorder. Then he served a four-year ban, from 2006 to 2010 for a failed test for testosterone — which Gatlin has claimed was due to a massage therapist, Chris Whetstine, who rubbed the cream onto his legs without his knowledge.

This has always struck some as the kind of story that would make for an excellent subject for cross-examination under oath in federal court.

Meanwhile, as the South African scientist Ross Tucker pointed out in an excellent column, Gatlin has to confront “three strikes” in a “world of unprecedented skepticism — he is a former doper, dominating a historically doped event, while running faster than his previously doped self.”

At the same time, it’s also the case that the doping rules are what they are. Gatlin gets to run again.

Also, and particularly in the United States, everyone gets a second chance.

Since the days of the Pilgrims, that is the narrative of our nation. All you history majors: you can look it up. Everyone gets a second chance.

By now, the rules, as even Gatlin himself understands, because he articulated them after Saturday’s race, are quite simple and elegant. You apologize in public, owning what you did, and we all move on.

Gay, for instance, recently served a one-year ban. At the Relays, he apologized. He won Saturday’s 100 in 9.88. (Gatlin did not run the 100 here.)

“You know," Gatlin said, referring to Gay, "I mean, what more can you do? He came out and he publicly apologized for his incident. You know, he asked for forgiveness [from] his fans and his teammates, which is us. You know, what more can you do? He gave back his [2012 Olympic] medal. He gave back money. He’s back in the sport, working hard, just to feed his family, like anybody else in the sport.

“So, you know, I can’t do nothing but forgive him … because I have to focus on my race and my aspects and try to get on the podium myself.”

All of which makes the sustained back-and-forth that erupted at Friday’s pre-race news conference all the more difficult to comprehend.

First it was Gatlin and Jean Denis Coquard of the French newspaper L’Equipe.

The reporter asked Gatlin about a study that asked whether he could benefit — even if he was clean now — about the long-term benefit of steroids:

“I think it’s ridiculous. My situation was 2006. That was a decade ago. If anybody says that can happen a whole decade later, they need to go and see what’s happening in the medical world. Don’t come to me with that, you know. I have been in the sport, I have been injured since then, I have been out of the sport, now I am back in the sport and I am running very well, a lot of people have also been in the same situation I have, so those are the people you need to go ask those questions to.”

Then came a question — referenced in Tucker’s blog as well — about the possibility, suggested in a study on mice, that the positive effects of doping can linger long after doping ends.

Gatlin: “I don’t understand why you would match a laboratory mouse to a human being. That’s unfathomable to me. I don’t understand that. So that’s OK.”

A couple moments later, Weldon Johnson of LetsRun.com entered the fray.

Johnson wanted to ask the same question he had at the Relays: “I asked a question to you and Tyson …”

Gatlin, knowing full well what the question was — how do you assure people you are competing clean? — interrupted, saying, “I think Tyson covered that question,” meaning with the apology.

“I wanted to see if you would answer it.”

“He answered all the questions.”

“I think a lot of people would have more like — you haven’t really come clean about what happened in 2006 …

“There’s no comments. There’s no more comments. There’s no more comments. Do you have a question?” Gatlin pointed to his left. “I said everything I had to say on that. There’s no comment. You can read all the articles.”

“Will you admit to taking performance-enhancing drugs?”

By now the two were talking just not at but over each other.

“There’s no admitting to it. There’s articles. I had the articles. There’s no admitting to it. You can go back and read it. If you’re a history major, you can go back in the archives, go read those articles …

“So you still stick to the same story, that you’re the one guy …”

“Why do I need to change it? What is there to change?”

“That Chris Whetstine is the one who …”

“What does there need to be to change? Go ask Chris Whetstine?”

“He lives here, right?”

“I don’t know. Does he? You’re the reporter.”

“I’m trying to find out.”

“OK, go do that then. Until then, I’m going to answer these questions over here.” Again, Gatlin pointed to his left.

Johnson, undeterred, tried a new tack, referring to Trevor Graham, the coach implicated in the BALCO scandal: “Did you see anyone else in Trevor’s group doping?”

“… I don’t know anybody in those situations.”

“Do you understand how some of the public might be …”

Again, Gatlin interrupted: “Until then, I’m going to deal with the 200 meters in the Prefontaine.”

“I get that. And it’s amazing what you’ve done after four years off. But …”

“Well, if you get that, then why are you asking these questions that happened a decade ago? You’re not a history major, are you?”

Johnson: “… Because a lot of people don’t believe your story.”

Gatlin: “Are you a history major?

Johnson: “I was a history major, actually,” a 1996 Yale graduate whose thesis, “Female Labor Force Participation in 1880,” won the Charles Heber Dickerman Memorial Prize, awarded to one or more seniors presenting the best departmental essay.

Gatlin, who obviously had no knowledge of any such thing: “Good. Really? Good. Because maybe you should go do that, in a museum, or something. Because I am running track and field today. And tomorrow. And the next day after that. Which is the future. That’s why I’m here.”

At that, he turned around to the rest of the ladies and gentlemen of the press, and said, “Any questions? Any more?”

The Pre — with due respect to organizers of the other Diamond League meet in a few weeks in New York — is the premier international track meet in the United States. Gatlin, and his entourage, have to know coming in that he is going to get these kinds of questions. It’s not just L’Equipe that was here. The BBC was, too. And others.

How hard is it to be patient and polite and say, “I understand everyone’s curiosity but I ask for your understanding and patience. I have moved on and I hope you will, too.”

Or, better yet, to do some deep soul-searching and do what Gay did in the Bahamas.

What a good number of people close to the sport really want from Gatlin is a full accounting. There is a sense — and of course this is going to be hard for him to confront — that the truth remains elusive. That’s why there is such restlessness.

What’s difficult to comprehend, meanwhile, is that Gatlin is surrounded by good people. His agent, Renaldo Nehemiah, and his coach, Dennis Mitchell, are stand-up guys. If you have only a glancing knowledge of the sport, particularly in regard to Mitchell, you might not believe this is the case. But it is so.

Winning Saturday seemed a salve. At least for a while.

“I love the fans,” Gatlin said after the race. “I love that the fans love to see a race. Not just a Justin Gatlin race but just to see track and field, you know. We are not the most popular sport in the U.S. so to see the stands packed out here, you want to give back as much as you can to these fans. They come out to see a race that has action for nine seconds or 19 seconds.

“So a lot of people think, OK, they’re sitting on the stands or they’re sitting courtside for two hours or four quarters. Ours is over really quickly. So you want to give them something.”

He also said, “These fans, this is the home of Prefontaine. He’s a distance runner at the best. For them to be excited to see a sprint race, you know, these are true fans and I’m glad to be able to run out here for these fans every year.”

Track and field: 'soul' and 'heart' of the Games

MONACO — It was 15 years ago Wednesday that Senegal’s Lamine Diack took over as president of the IAAF, the international track and field federation, just 12 days after the death of Italy’s Primo Nebiolo. Diack is now 81, and here Friday he grew reflective looking both back and out at the last few months of his presidency, due to end next August. “We must never relax, be relaxed,” he said, “about our place in the world of sport.”

In a speech immediately preceding the announcement to the press of the IAAF’s athlete of the year awards, won by New Zealand shot-putter Valerie Adams and French pole-vaulter Renaud Lavillenie, Diack said it was a “pleasure” to celebrate both so that they, and like-minded others, “can continue to fight for our values.”

Track and field, he said, is “helping to shape” the International Olympic Committee’s “Agenda 2020” potential reform project. At the same time, he made clear, track “is the soul” of the Games and while new sports “may be coming and so on, athletics,” using the word in wide use outside the United States for track and field, is not just the soul but also “the heart” of the Games.

In all, Diack's remarks marked the sort of valedictory one might have expected come next August in Beijing, upon the occasion of both the 2015 world championships, when the vote to succeed him will take place. The vote is Aug. 19; the meet itself runs Aug. 22-30.

Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka are expected to vie for the presidency. Neither has publicly declared.

Diack’s comments Friday turned into a reminder of how track and field’s leaders see the sport as the undisputed No. 1 Olympic event, combined with a pointed political rejoinder — conflated with the selection of both Adams and Lavillenie — of the import not just of track but of field as well, and of two marquee athletes widely believed to be doping-free.

In a year in which the U.S. sprinter Justin Gatlin — who has been busted twice for doping — dominated the sprints and was included in the initial nominations for athlete of the year, which caused considerable controversy within track circles, Adams and Lavillenie stand, for many, as portraits of The Anti-Gatlin.

Adams becomes the first female thrower to win athlete of the year, Lavillenie the first male pole vaulter.

Not even Bubka won the award, which was established in 1988.

Beyond the drama sparked by someone like Gatlin, a year like 2014 makes for an intriguing set piece for end-of-year awards. Usain Bolt did not run, or at least much. There were no outdoor world championships and no Olympic Games. Different athletes, from wherever in the world, can find themselves working on different things — witness decathlon champion Ashton Eaton’s foray into the 400-meter hurdles.

Lavillenie, in mid-February, jumping in Donetsk, Ukraine, before an audience that included Bubka, broke Bubka’s 21-year-old world-record in the vault. The old mark: 6.15 meters, 20 feet-2 1/4 inches. The new: 6.16, 20-2 1/2.

“Everything came faster than I planned,” he said of breaking Bubka’s record, explaining that he “was more for maybe breaking it in 2015 or ’16.”

He went on, “This is the beauty of sport. You can’t plan everything. It was really amazing for me.”

Lavillenie is of course the 2012 Olympic champion. He had only one blemish on his 2014 season — he no-heighted at the Diamond League meet in Stockholm, meaning he lost in but one of 22 outings. "This," he said, "is not bad."

Adams is, right now, like the U.S. baseball star Joe DiMaggio. She has not lost in 56 straight meets.

Over the past two years, she has undergone four surgeries. She came to Monaco nursing the effects of work on a shoulder and an elbow, looking out not just toward 2015 but to Rio and the 2016 Olympics and the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia.

“It takes lots of guts, four operations, lots of pain, lots of suffering, but if you have the passion firing, it makes the difference,” she said, adding, “When you want to do something, it becomes easier for you.”

Adams is now 30. She also said, “I’m not 21 anymore. I have to manage these things. I have that fighting fire within me. I’m mentally strong and my pain threshold is high.”

Adams has long been an outspoken advocate for competing clean, and in an event marked by notorious episodes of doping. She has two Olympic golds, in 2008 and 2012; four outdoor world titles; and three world indoor golds.

“The only drugs I’m on is some kiwi fruit, some lamb from New Zealand and some cows,” she quipped. “And good genes.”

As an example: one of her many brothers, Steven, was a 2013 first-round draft pick by the Oklahoma City Thunder; he is currently averaging 8.1 points and 6.8 rebounds per game.

She also is an extraordinarily proud New Zealander, saying Friday, “We have four million people and 16 million sheep. Go Kiwis!”

Make no mistake: a focus of the IOC’s Agenda 2020 plan is a shift in the Olympic program from sports to events. The idea is to try to get new events in such as surfing, skateboarding, climbing. To do that, though, while keeping within the IOC’s self-proclaimed cap of 10,500 athletes is going to mean that cuts are going to have to come from somewhere, and that means track and field is going to be approached.

Race walking? For all those who consider it goofy: look at the diverse range of countries that have won medals or competed for real in just the past few editions of the Games, especially in the women's events; isn't the IOC purportedly big on universality? Was it mere coincidence that among the IAAF's Hall of Fame inductees Friday was the Polish race-walking star Robert Korzeniowski, winner of four Olympic gold medals and, at the world championships, three golds and a bronze?

Hammer throw? What about tradition and history? In the Summer Games since 1900? What about IOC activist Koji Murofushi of Japan, the 2004 Athens gold medalist?

Shot put? Especially the women’s shot? Adams is in every regard a deserving IAAF athlete of the year winner in 2014. She was nominated for the same award in 2013, when the Jamaican sprinter Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce prevailed.

Again, looking toward the IOC’s vote on Agenda 2020 back here in Monaco in just two weeks, what  -- if anything -- is to be read into the selection of Valerie Adams as your 2014 IAAF female athlete of the year?

“It’s always difficult to compete against the glamor events on the track,” Adams said, adding of the throwers, “We train just as hard as everyone else,” and, “It’s not just a track event, it’s a track and field event.”

Diack may be 81 but many over the years have foundered in underestimating his political skill and resolve. Just moments before, he had said, “I always knew there were many challenges and many things to do.

“I am happy to say that I still have nine months to go. In the past I was counting years. Now I am even counting days. I soon will be transmitting my stick to somebody who will be able to carry it even better than me. This evening’s gala,” referring to the formal announcement of the winners, “must be beautiful for all those who love our sport.

“…This,” he said, “is what I wanted to say.”

Bahamas rocks, U.S. rolls

NASSAU, Bahamas — The crowd was loud for the local boys’ 4x400 race. That was with Thomas A. Robinson Stadium not even maybe one-quarter full. With 19 people in line downstairs for the Kings of Jerk chicken ($10) and pork ($12), it would be more than an hour until the pros took to the blue Mondo track, two more after after that until the Bahamas Golden Knights, with three of the four guys who won Olympic gold in London two years ago in the 4x4, lining it up. Then the place all but erupted.

It’s a no-brainer why the IAAF is coming back here next year for the follow-up edition of the World Relays.

Next year’s meet will be held earlier, the first weekend in May, straight after the Penn Relays. The Youth Olympic Games this summer in Nanjing, China, will feature mixed boys and girls relays, and who knows how that will play for the 2015 event in Nassau? Maybe, too, there might be medleys or sprint hurdles. It’s clear, too, that there need to be more women’s teams in the 4x1500.

But these are all nice problems to have.

Because, frankly, every track meet should be like this.

This meet had passion.

Unlike, for instance, the first few days of last year’s world championships in Moscow, where Luzhniki Stadium was way too empty, here Robinson was alive and jamming. It was 79 years to the day that Jesse Owens had done his thing, tying or setting four world records in the space of 45 minutes at the Big Ten championships, and all of a sudden Sunday track and field was vital again.

They went crazy here, cheering loud and long for the consolation final in the men’s 400, won by the Belgians. The consolation final!

Passion is what track and field needs.

Passion is what the Bahamas delivered, along with great weather, spectacular scenery, a Junkanoo band, fantastic hospitality, first-rate facilities and a fast track that produced three world records, 37 national records and, overall, saw the U.S. team — and especially the U.S. women — dominate the meet.

One world record came Sunday night in the men’s 4x1500, courtesy of — who else — the Kenyans. Two came Saturday, in the women’s 4x1500 and in the men’s 4x200.

The Kenyan men destroyed the 4x1500 record by more than 14 seconds. The new time: 14:22.22.

Asbel Kiprop ran a 3:32.3 anchor. He pointed the baton at the finish line. After the victory ceremony, the Kenyans threw their flowers to the crowd. More roars.

The U.S., anchored by Leo Manzano, ran an American-record 14.40.80. Ethiopia — which had to battle visa issues just to get here — finished third, in 14:41.22.

As for the U.S. women:

On Saturday, the 4x100 team won in 41.88.

Then came victories Sunday in the:

— 4x400, keyed by a killer third leg from Natasha Hastings, in 3:21.73.

— 4x800, with Chanelle Price leading off and Brenda Martinez anchoring, in 8:01.58. Kenya finished second.

"It started to get loud and I just wanted to bleed for my teammates,” Martinez would say afterwards.

— 4x200, in 1:29.45, with Great Britain second, 17-hundredths back. Jamaica took third in 1:30.04, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce anchoring.

Gold in the 100, 200, 400, 800 — and silver, after a fall, in the 1500.

There was one other U.S. victory Sunday.

Just not one the crowd came to see.

The Bahamas’ line-up in the men’s 4x400 featured Demetrius Pinder, Michael Mathieu and Chris Brown, just like two years ago in London. LaToy Williams subbed for Ramon Miller. Williams opened it up; Pinder ran second, as usual; Brown, third (he had run first in London); Mathieu would close it out.

The U.S. countered with David Verburg; Tony McQuay; 2012 Olympic triple jump champion Christian Taylor, who also runs a mean 400; and LaShawn Merritt, who is the 2008 Olympic as well as 2009 and 2013 world champion in the 400.

Merritt is also a gold medalist at the 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2013 4x400 relays.

It takes nothing — repeat, nothing — away from the Bahamas gold in 2012 to note that LaShawn Merritt was hurt and did not run in London.

The Bahamas defeated the U.S. in April at the Penn Relays; the U.S. has never lost to the same team twice in a row in the men’s 4x4.

By the time Brown handed off to Mathieu, the Bahamas had a four-meter lead. The music was at full roar. The place was jumping. It was loud. It was exciting. It was great theater.

The men’s 4x4 was, simply put, an advertisement for track and field.

Merritt is 27, 28 at the end of June. He has been through it and come out the other side. Not just on the track but, as has been well-documented, off. He has matured and is as mentally tough a customer in not just this sport but any sport.

He tried a move at 250 meters. Nothing there. So he settled in and waited, behind Mathieu, for the turn.

And then just turned it on.

Down the stretch, LaShawn Merritt showed why he is one of the great 400 runners in history.

He didn’t just run Mathieu down, he buried him.

The clock read 2:57.25 when Merritt crossed first, the crowd suddenly very, very quiet.

Mathieu crossed next, in 2:57.59. Trinidad & Tobago took third, in 2:58.34.

Merritt’s final split: 43.8.

Mathieu’s: 44.6.

“Of course we felt some pressure,” Merritt said later. “It was a big business for us. The Bahamian guys sometimes do trash-talking so we wanted to come out here and, in front of their fans, prove that we’re the best in the world.”

The U.S. men didn’t get the chance to challenge almighty Jamaica in the men’s 4x1. Anchored by Yohan Blake, the Jamaicans won in 37.77. The Americans didn’t run in the final. They had been disqualified in the heats — the result of yet another bad pass, this time Trell Kimmons to Rakieem Salaam, Man 2 to Man 3 on the backstretch.

By the time the pass got completed, the guys were way out of the zone. Obvious DQ.

The men’s 4x2 team had been DQ’d Saturday for another out-of-zone pass.

It surely will prove little consolation that the Jamaican 4x4 team Sunday dropped the baton.

Some context:

Of the last 11 major championships, world or Olympic, including these Relays, dating back to 2001, the U.S. men’s 4x1 team has been DQ’d or DNF’d five times — again, out five of 11.

It’s six of 11 if you include the retroactive doping DQ for the 2001 team.

There is only one word for that: unacceptable.

What is far more problematic is that USA Track & Field has been down this institutional road before. See, for instance, the Project 30 report from 2009.

Looking ahead now to the world championships in Beijing in 2015 and to the Rio Summer Games in 2016, and even beyond, one of the key action points going forward for USATF has to be addressing its sprint relay issues.

Some of what happened here may be, simply, that runners took off too early. That can happen.

Then again, it may also be the case that USATF would be well-advised to name a relay coach — someone in charge of just the relays — and get this right.

There is ample history for any reasonable person to argue that USATF is dysfunctional and incapable of this or that.

There’s also the counter-argument that, at some level, USATF must be doing something right. The 29 medals U.S. athletes won at the London Games didn’t just happen.

Duffy Mahoney, USATF’s high-performance director, has been involved in track and field for decades.

He was alternately sanguine about the DQ’s and resolute about the need to get results.

“Life,” he said, “is what happens to you while you are making plans.”

He also said that the possibility of a full-on relay coach is “one of the beginnings of the solution.”

Who that might be, of course, is a mystery.

It’s hugely unlikely to be Jon Drummond. He is now enmeshed in all kinds of legal complexities involving the Tyson Gay matter. Beyond which — to think that Drummond is the only person in the United States who can coach up the relays is absurd.

Dennis Mitchell served here. On the one hand, the women won, and for the most part they were not the Olympic A-listers. But, again, the men had issues. And Mitchell has a significant PR issue because of his doping ties.

The relays involve timing, communication and confidence. And more.

As Manteo Mitchell, a courageous silver medalist at the London 2012 for the U.S. team in the 4x400 relay, posted on Twitter Sunday within minutes after the 4x100 debacle, without further comment, “Too many egos in one group.”

The Jamaicans seemingly have proven you don’t need group therapy to run the sprint relays. The Americans shouldn’t, either.

A light rain began to fall late Sunday as they wrapped it all up here, the Americans pondering what’s next, the IAAF exuberant.

“In the ‘sun, sea and sand paradise’ that the Bahamas markets itself, we have experienced a true sporting paradise which has excelled beyond our expectations,” Lamine Diack, the IAAF president, said. “The people have embraced the IAAF World Relays and the noise of their support will be left ringing in our memories for many years to come.”

As the rain fell, Timothy Munnings, the director of sports in the Bahamas’ ministry of youth, sports and culture, walked through the stands.

He stopped to talk with some journalists, asking — earnestly — how the event had gone.

“Thank you for coming,” he said. “Next year, you’ve got to be back.”

Awards gala turns to doping talk

MONACO -- Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Jamaican sprint stars, were named Saturday the IAAF male and female athletes of the year. To think it would have been anyone else would strain credulity. What, they were going to name Bohdan Bodarenko or Zuzana Hejnova? Only track diehards know he's a high jumper from Ukraine and she is from the Czech Republic and runs the 400 hurdles. Come on.

Bolt and Fraser-Pryce won three gold medals apiece, and in spectacular fashion, at the 2013 world championships in Moscow. Bolt is, more or less, track and field. He was his usual awesome self, winning the 100 at the exact instant a lightning bolt flashed across the sky, the moment captured in a remarkable photo. Candidly, Fraser-Pryce was even better than he was in Moscow, winning the women's 100 by an absurd .22 seconds.

The IAAF did not direct voting for the awards. Even so, the challenge facing it and, more broadly, world sport is that the two Jamaicans were going to be the obvious winners in a year in which matters of doping and its protocols have emerged as a major concern in Jamaica and, indeed, once again, in track and field.

Eight Jamaicans have tested positive this year, including former 100-meter world-record holder Asafa Powell and two-time Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown.

This is not -- repeat, not -- to impugn Bolt or Fraser-Pryce or to assign guilt by association.

Bolt has never tested positive and has consistently proclaimed he runs clean. Fraser-Pryce served a six-month sentence after a positive 2010 test for oxycodone, saying it was for a medicine she took after oral surgery. Oxycodone, a banned narcotic, is not considered a performance-enhancer or a masking agent.

Bolt's award is his fifth in six years. Fraser-Pryce's is her first and, as well, the first for a woman from Jamaica since Merlene Ottey in 1990. She said she was "really excited, of course." Saturday's announcement marked only the third time that athletes from the same country have won both awards; Americans Carl Lewis and Florence Griffith-Joyner won in 1988, Britons Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell in 1993.

Fraser-Pryce's award also is believed to mark the first time an athlete who has previously served a doping suspension has been named athlete of the year. Again, in fairness, her suspension was for a painkiller, not a steroid or blood-booster. Nonetheless, she served six months.

"Jamaica has had some problems this season," Bolt acknowledged, referring not to Fraser-Pryce but to the failed tests by the others, adding, "But that is not part of my focus."

Some problems, indeed:

The World Anti-Doping Agency is now reviewing the apparent systems breakdown by the Jamaican anti-doping agency, which goes by the acronym JADCO. This summer, former JADCO executive director Renee Anne Shirley claimed in a Sports Illustrated story that the agency had conducted just one out-of-competition test in the five months leading up to the London 2012 Games.

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Dr. Herb Elliott, JADCO's head, may not have the medical credentials he claims. It's now not clear whether Elliott will stay in his position.

Dr. Paul Wright, JADCO's senior doping tester, told the BBC the rash of failed tests may be the "tip of the iceberg." His comments came just days after a WADA team visited Jamaica.

In Kenya, meanwhile, WADA and International Olympic Committee authorities are growing increasingly impatient while waiting for confirmation that a task force to investigate allegations of a doping culture there, promised more than a year ago, has been set up.

It was noted at the WADA conference in Johannesburg that this IAAF gala was going on at precisely the same time as the WADA event. The IAAF likes to portray itself as the top dog among all Olympic sports. Usually, it has good reason. But for those IOC members now serving on the IAAF council it was apparent that other IOC members here were scarce. Like, maybe even none.

There's a new world order in the Olympic movement. The Jacques Rogge years are done. It's in the IAAF's keen interest to reach out to the IOC and to be tuned in -- acutely -- to what the new president, Thomas Bach, is saying, where he's saying it and how he's saying it.

Like -- a few days ago in Johannesburg, when he's warning Jamaica and Kenya that if this kind of thing keeps up they might be banned from the Olympics for doping irregularities.

In real life, nobody really believes that is going to happen. But -- it's the tone that matters. Keep in mind, too, that IOC vice president Craig Reedie was just voted in as the incoming WADA president.

Yet, at the news conference Saturday afternoon announcing the athlete of the year winners, IAAF president Lamine Diack took the occasion to assert that WADA was running a "ridiculous" campaign aimed in particular at Jamaica and Kenya. Say what?

“I read in the newspapers and it was like a campaign against Jamaica, and I think it was ridiculous,” Diack said. "They are the most tested athletes in the world.

“And so I read in the newspapers how WADA are going there and they are going to suspend," meaning the two nations from the Olympics. "They cannot suspend anybody!

“It was ridiculous, this campaign. After Jamaica, they went to Kenya because some doctor went there and said the Kenyan athletes are not controlled. They are the most controlled -- 650 or so athletes in Kenya controlled, every time, in and out of competition. They went there. What did they find? Nothing.”

Diack said, "So I think we have to stop all this. We are doing our best in athletics. You will never have an athlete suspended for four years in football," meaning soccer.

He said again a moment later, "Stop all this."

Bolt, who is typically guarded with the press when it comes to volunteering information on sensitive subjects, proved quite forthcoming Saturday. He allowed as the relentless drumbeat of news since mid-summer about whether or not JADCO was -- or was not -- doing its job was now having a meaningful impact.

It was, he said, hitting him in his wallet, with a potential sponsor just this week backing out of a deal.

"It is really costing me money now and I'm not too happy about it," he said.

Perhaps nothing, ladies and gentlemen, is likely to spur change faster in Jamaica than that -- its biggest star is now going to demand it, and for the most elemental of reasons. Always remember: money talks.

Also revealing was this:

In an interview Friday, Fraser-Pryce had suggested that Jamaica's track and field athletes might need the protection of a union to better serve their needs. She even said she would be willing to strike if the occasion warranted.

Different people are of course motivated by different things. Fraser-Pryce's rise from one of Jamaica's hardest neighborhoods and whose desire both to serve and give back is well-documented.

To gain any sort of traction, one would have to believe an athletes' union in Jamaica would need Bolt's support. Then again, he typically gets asked at news conferences either about his next party or about his next sequence of workouts -- not his next public-service campaign, though a fair amount of good work back home actually does get done in his name.

Asked Saturday if he would also be willing to walk a picket line, Bolt said, "Everybody has their own personal idea. Personally, track and field is my job."

In that spirit, he reiterated his new goal is to run under 19 seconds in the 200, if his body holds up. His world record is 19.19, set at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

He said he had just gotten back to training about two and a half weeks ago. "I'm just getting soreness in my muscles now," he said.

He said he never sets out each year to be athlete of the year. "I just want to run fast. I want to keep my titles," he said, adding a moment later, "I just do my best, show the world I want to be a champion."

That was at the afternoon news conference. Later, at the evening awards show, with the cameras rolling for a broadcast going live around the world, it was back to the doping talk -- if obliquely.

“I know track and field’s been through a lot, but I see a lot of positive things coming out,” Bolt said. Directing his remarks to young athletes, he said, "Show the  world that we can do this, and we can make athletics a better place.”

SAFP: no Jamaica doping problem

MONACO -- Jamaica does not have a doping problem, sprint star Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce said. Eight Jamaican track and field athletes have tested positive this year, including former 100-meter world-record holder Asafa Powell and two-time Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown. The World Anti-Doping Agency, meanwhile, is now reviewing the apparent breakdown by the Jamaican national anti-doping agency in the testing of the Caribbean island nation's sprinters in the six months leading up to the London Games.

"I don't think we have a doping issue," Fraser-Pryce said in an interview with a small group of international reporters. Instead, she said, at issue in Jamaica are cases of individual athletes "neglecting to correctly check the supplements" they are ingesting, adding, "The truth is, it's a minefield."

She decried a lack of support from both the Jamaican track and field federation and the government, declaring, "Nobody is there to give us guidance and support," and saying the time had perhaps come for the island nation's to unionize: "We as the athletes need a voice."

If need be, unions strike to achieve their goals. Runners run. Would Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, champion of the 100-meters at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, winner of three gold medals at the Moscow 2013 world championships, refuse to run, to support a union, to prove a point?

"If it comes down to actually not competing [because] things are not up to par … yeah, I would," she said. "If it means lobbying for the athletes, yeah, I would. And not having our name tarnished, yeah, I would."

Fraser-Pryce's comments came on the eve of the IAAF's annual gala here in Monaco, normally a festive event free of such politics. She is the odds-on favorite to be named the female athlete of the year at ceremonies Saturday night. The two other finalists: New Zealand shot put star Valerie Adams and Czech 400-meter world champion hurdler Zuzana Hejnova.

Fraser-Pryce, typically, is cheerful and understated. Indeed, though she had much to say Friday, she was her usual soft-spoken self -- her comments delivered so quietly that one had to strain to hear her, even with a microphone.

The recently elected president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, speaking amid the WADA conference in Johannesburg, this week issued a dramatic warning to nations such as Jamaica and Kenya, saying athletes might be denied a chance to compete in the Games if nations were not compliant with WADA rules.

"The [IOC] charter is very clear that this," meaning expulsion, "can be one of the results," he told the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. "It's not the only one and not the exclusive one. But non-compliance can result in the exclusion from competitions."

There would be a long road before the IOC would consider exclusion. Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce -- and Kenya's 800-meter champion David Rudisha -- are huge stars. Even so, the fact that the new president would even mention it as a possibility is noteworthy, with Rudisha since saying, "It is bad. The faster they tackle the matter the better for our country's image. Not all of us are cheats. Some may have been [mis]led into abusing drugs."

Asked Friday about the possibility of Jamaica being excluded from the 2016 Rio Olympics, Fraser-Pryce said Friday, "I am not the one who writes the rules. I can't answer the question. I hope it never gets to that."

Fraser-Pryce herself served a six-month suspension in 2010-11 after a positive test for oxycodone. She said it was for medicine she took for a toothache. Oxycodone, a banned narcotic, is not considered a performance-enhancer or a masking agent.

She has said since dominating the 100 and 200 and running a leg in the winning Jamaican 4x100 relay in Moscow that some have questioned whether she was doping. On Friday, she said, "There is nothing for me to hide," adding of the rash of positive tests affecting other Jamaican sprinters this year, "I don't think it has cast any shadows on my achievements because I know what I have worked hard for."

She also offered incredible insight into what drives her not just to win but to keep winning.

In Moscow, Fraser-Pryce won the 100 in 10.71, defeating second-place Murielle Ahoure of Ivory Coast by a ridiculous .22 seconds.

She won the 200 -- not her favorite event -- by .15 seconds. Again, Ahoure took silver.

She anchored the Jamaican relay to victory in a championship-record 41.29. The Americans took silver, more than a second behind, in 42.75.

When she crosses the line first, Fraser-Pryce said, she does not exult in victory. Instead, she is even at that instant already thinking -- what's next?

"I am not enjoying it," she said, adding a moment later, "“A lot of athletes become so overwhelmed with their success when it happens, they forget about the next year. I constantly try to remind myself that this is just one chapter in my journey. There are many more chapters to write and finish."

She also said at other moments, "I feel like if I become complacent, then everything I’ve achieved might fall." And, "I never allow myself to fully unwind or have a vacation." And, "It’s always about doing better and taking advantage of the present."

Others, she said, "become complacent and comfortable and believe they have arrived."

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce -- never.

Mo Farah's double double-double

Distance running is a hard, lonely affair. The tell is the last kilometer. The crucible is the last lap. In our time, one man has emerged -- from among the Kenyans, the Ethiopians, the Eritreans -- to dominate, truly dominate, track's two distance events, the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters. He is Mo Farah, a global citizen who was born in Somalia, trains in Oregon, runs for Great Britain.

Farah won the 5,000 meters Friday night at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium by the narrowest of margins, crossing in 13:26.98. In so doing, he won not just a double-double but has now performed an amazing double double-double.

That is -- he won both the 5 and 10k here in Moscow. At last year's London Olympics, he won both the 5 and 10k as well. At the 2011 worlds in Daegu, South Korea, Farah won the 5k; he lost the 10k by 26-hundredths of a second to Ibrahim Jeilan of Ethiopia, whom he beat in this year's 10k by two steps.

Only Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia has done the worlds double, in 2009. Bekele also doubled up at the 2008 Beijing Games. And the word "legendary" is typically attached to Bekele now as if it were his first name instead of Kenenisa.

"It was a lot harder work than last year." Farah said afterward. "I never thought in my career that I'd achieve something like this."

The finish of Friday's 5k was so fantastic that it was, genuinely, an instant classic.

Hagos Gebrhiwet of Ethiopia finished second, Isiah Kiplangat Koech of Kenya third. Both were timed in 13:27.26. They had to go to the thousandths to separate them: Gebrhiwet crossed, the clock said, in 13:27.259, Koech in 13:27.260.

It couldn't get any closer.

Of course, for track freaks it made for a sort of holy grail. But for anyone who appreciates will and effort, it shows why track can still claim such a powerful hold on the imagination -- and why, despite the malevolent ill of doping that has corrupted so much in the sport over the past several years, a race like Friday's 5k and its finish offers such tangible evidence of what it can still be all about.

It's three guys pushing themselves, to their limits, to get to the finish line first. Who wants it most?

Of course, this all assumes -- and there is no, repeat no, evidence to date -- that Farah is guilty of anything other than being very, very good.

With that caveat:

With three laps to go in the race, Farah went to the front. The others in the race lined up behind, among them his training partner, the American Galen Rupp, the silver medalist in the 10k in London.

A little math, for those unfamiliar with the 5k on the track.

A track is of course 400 meters. The 5000 -- this is fourth-grade math, but just to make it easy -- is 12 and one-half laps.

The races tend to start slow but then pick up toward the end. That, too, is only sensible.

A little more math, for reference:

The best 400-meter runners, like the American LaShawn Merritt, run championship races in about 44 seconds. A truly exceptional 400 winner goes 43-something.

What happens in the 5 and 10k is that after lap after numbing lap, the body starts screaming, "Stop - this hurts, and bad." That, though, is precisely when the best distance guys have to turn on the jets and run a last kilometer of about 2:20-something and a last lap of roughly 51 to 53 something. Anything less -- no chance.

In Farah's winning 10k in Moscow, he needed a 2:26.23 final kilometer to hold off Jeilan.

In Friday's 5k, he ran a 2:22.29 last kilometer. That is simply flying.

His last 800: about 1:51.

Last 600: 1:21.93.

Last lap: 53.51.

The difference between first and third in Friday's 5k, 28-hundredths of a second, is the smallest-ever in a world championships. The previous smallest differential: 33-hundredths, at the 2003 worlds in Paris.

Rupp finished eighth, in 13:29.87.

Farah also said this: "Anything is possible, I guess."

In other action Friday, Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce also doubled up, winning the women's 200 meters to go with the 100 she won Monday.

She became the first winner of the women's sprint double since 1991.

Fraser-Pryce made it look like a breeze: 22.17.

Murielle Ahoure of the Ivory Coast, the silver medalist in the 100, took second in the 200, too, in 22.32. They had to go to the thousandths in the women's 100 as well; Ahoure was timed in  22.313.

Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria, who is also having a fantastic meet, took third, also in 22.32; precisely, 22.319. Okagbare won silver in the long jump on Sunday behind American Brittney Reese, with a jump of 6.99 meters, or 22 feet, 11-1/4 inches. On Monday, she ran sixth in the 100, finishing in 11.04.

American Allyson Felix, going for a record fourth world title in the 200, didn't make it out of the curve, crumpling to the track, holding the back of her leg. She was carried off by her brother, Wes, who is also her manager; an ultrasound revealed a tear of her right medial hamstring, USA Track & Field announced.

She said later she was "extremely devastated" but in classic Allyson Felix form took the time and effort to nonetheless wish "all of my teammates the best for the rest of the meet."

The U.S. men's 4x400 relay won -- and the only drama was whether there would be a dropped baton.

There was not.

David Verburg ran a 44.37 to open things up. Tony McQuay, the 400 silver medalist, split a 44.68. Arman Hall ran 44.92. Merritt, the 400 gold medalist, ran 44.74 to close things down, and the Americans won by more than a second, finishing in 2:58.71, 2013's best time.

Jamaica took second, 2:59.88, Russia third, 2:59.9.

For Hall, it was his fifth world championship medal in three years -- 2011 world youth 400 and sprint medley relay champion, 2012 world junior 400 champ and 4x400 relay and, now, his first senior title.

The United States, minus Merritt, took silver in London last year.

Germany's David Storl defended his shot-put title with a throw of 21.73 meters, or 71-3 1/2, the first back-to-back winner since American John Godina in the mid-1990s. To celebrate, he put on a silly hat.

American Ryan Whiting came in second at 21.57, or 70-9 1/4.

Canada's Dylan Armstrong, with a throw of 21.34, or 70 1/4, got third. That medal is Canada's fourth, its best-ever total at a worlds.

In the men's long jump, American Dwight Phillips, 35 years old, the 2004 Athens Games gold medalist, four times a world champion -- most recently in 2011 -- had hoped Moscow would produce one final leap for the record books.

It was not to be.

The oldest man ever to jump in the final of a world championships, Phillips jumped 7.88 meters, or 25-10 1/4, on his third attempt. But he did not advance, and finished 11th.

"Today I gave everything I had, and it just wasn't enough," Phillips said. "Obviously I was looking for that storybook ending but I'm so proud of myself."

In the men's 200, Usain Bolt ran a 20.66 in the first round, 20.12 in the semifinals. The finals go down Saturday.

The heats of the women's 100-meter hurdles got underway with American sensation Brianna Rollins qualifying in 12.55.

Australia's Sally Pearson, the 2012 Games gold medalist, served notice that she may be -- finally in 2013 -- ready to rock with a season-best 12.62. Dawn Harper, the London silver medalist and 2008 Beijing gold medalist, got through easily in 12.84.

The 100 hurdles semifinals and finals are also set for Saturday.

Empty seats everywhere

MOSCOW -- If Luzhniki Stadium were, say, Staples Center, you'd be tempted to say that the crowd that "filled" the seats for the third full day of the 2013 track and field championships was like something you'd see at a mid-season women's basketball WNBA game featuring the Los Angeles Sparks against, say, the Tulsa Shock. That underwhelming.

It was so disconcerting, in fact, that one American business executive sent a text message Monday evening to a reporter friend saying he had a section of the stadium all to himself.

This on a cool, beautiful night when Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica rocked the women's 100 meter finals in 10.71 seconds, winning by an almost unheard-of 22-hundredths of a second; American David Oliver made himself the comeback king in the 110-meter high hurdles in 13-flat; New Zealand's Valerie Adams proved herself, yet again, unstoppable in the women's shot put with a winning throw of 20.88 meters, or 68 feet, 6 inches; and more.

It's embarrassing, no two ways about it, and whether the blame is to be apportioned to the city of Moscow, the Russian government, the IAAF, the fact that it's summer and the Russians are quite naturally at their dachas and someone should have known that when they were planning a world championships for August -- whatever, it absolutely does not reflect well on what is supposed to be the No. 1 sport of the entire Olympic movement.

If it's this way here, in Moscow, it makes you wonder: what are the attendance figures bound to be in six months in Sochi, down in southwest Russia, for the 2014 Winter Games?

To be super-obvious: Moscow is one of the world's great capitals. Sochi is not. You can get to Luzhniki on the Moscow metro, one of the world's best. You get to Sochi, down in southwest Russia, on the Black Sea, by significant planning. The Sochi airport is not big. Only so many planes can land there in so many days.

These championships mark the beginning of Russia's so-called decade of sport. The 2014 Games will be followed by the 2015 swimming championships in Kazan and then, in 2018, soccer's World Cup.

One suspects the World Cup final, which will be back here in Luzhniki, will draw better than the track championships. Here, through three days, are the official numbers:

Saturday:

Morning -- 9,420

Evening -- 31,895

Sunday

Morning -- 12,861

Evening -- 40,461

Monday

Morning -- 9.350

Figures for Monday evening were not immediately available.

As always, the fine print:

-- The numbers are based on ticket scans at stadium gates. Someone who goes in and out multiple times counts only once.

-- Luzhniki is ordinarily an 81,000-seat stadium. As it has done in prior championships, the IAAF has blocked out blocks of seats to lower capacity. On Saturday and Sunday, capacity was 59,000 -- 43,000 spectators and 16 "accredited guests," meaning VIPS, media, athletes and others. On Monday, capacity was lowered further still, to 50,000 -- 34,000 spectators and 16,000 "accredited guests."

"It's dead. There's no atmosphere," Olympic champion Felix Sanchez told reporters after winning his 400-meter hurdles heat Monday morning.

"It's like day and night compared to London last year," he said, referring to the 2012 Summer Games.

As the attendance figures underscore, the contrast is especially marked in the morning heats.

In London, even the morning sessions were jammed. Here -- there are pockets of fans, in particular Ukrainians, noticeable in their blue and yellow, in the yellow, orange and red seats. Mostly, though, there are reporters and camera crews. Some are complete track junkies and love every single tidbit. Others are here on the off chance something unusual happens.

David Johnson, who runs the Penn Relays each spring and is here as a correspondent for Track & Field News, has been to every IAAF world championship since the first edition in Helsinki in 1983. He said of Moscow, "It feels like the smallest attendance, based on the men's 100 meters, in my experience."

That race, Sunday night, saw the stadium filled to roughly two-thirds capacity even though the biggest star in Olympic sports, Usain Bolt, was in the house. Bolt ran 9.77 to win; lightning struck at precisely the moment he crossed the finish line, creating not just one of track and field's but indeed all of sport's most iconic photographs in not just this but any year.

Luzhniki features an overhanging roof that circles the stadium. "Despite the size of the crowd," Johnson said, "the architecture of the stadium produces a noise beyond the crowd. It's the visual effect that's lacking."

That same overhanging roof, however, makes the scene -- particularly in the mornings -- even more eerie. The public-address system announcements ricochet, unintelligibly, around the empty seats.

Ticket prices started as low as 100 rubles, roughly $3. Even for Sunday night.

That's right -- you could have seen Bolt run Sunday night for 3 bucks.

Name a better deal in all of sports.

And yet -- the place could only manage two-thirds capacity?

Organizers allege that next weekend, which includes the four relay finals, is sold out. They also said before the event began that they had sold more than 80 percent of the ticket inventory.

Over the weekend, IAAF vice president Sergei Bubka, quoted by Reuters, said the weather might have been to blame:

"It was hot and very sunny and I know for Muscovites -- they always go to their dachas, they go outside, and maybe someone has bought a ticket and they don't attend.

"We insisted very seriously and very strongly regarding a promotion campaign and a lot of money was invested."

Journalist Elliott Denman has also been to every edition of the IAAF championships. A member of the U.S. Olympic track and field team at the Melbourne Games in 1956, he then turned to sportswriting and has been at the business -- one of the best -- for more than 50 years. He called attendance here at Moscow "sparse."

"Like everywhere," he surmised, "people have other opportunities."