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.”

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.

Not yet a 'pregnant penguin'

MOSCOW -- The clock said it was a couple minutes past 10 in the evening. All the action on the track was over. The only matter left to be decided was at the pole vault, and there was only one jumper left. Yelena Isinbayeva had all of Luzhniki Stadium to herself. Just the way she likes it.

The greatest female pole vaulter in history, the first-ever in history to clear five meters, won the third world title of her incredible career, the only one in Tuesday's field to clear 4.89 meters, or 16 feet and exactly one-half of an inch.

The world record is 5.07, or 16-7 1/2. Isinbayeva made three tries as the clock ticked past 10. None were really close. No matter. The crowd came to see the Pole Vault Diva, Isinbayeva. They were thrilled, roaring at her every attempt, at what -- for the first time -- felt like a real world championships here at Luzhniki.

"I am so happy the era of Isinbayeva is back again," she said at a news conference that stretched into early Wednesday. "It was never finished."

Perhaps this is the last of Isinbayeva's world titles. Or not. She says now she is going to take what she called a "small woman's break," intending to have a baby next year. She is due to be the honorary mayor of the athlete's village at the Sochi 2014 Winter Games and said she intends to be walking around -- she really said this -- like a "pregnant penguin" offering the world's skiers and skaters "the traditional bread and salt" like a good Russian host.

The world has never seen anyone quite like Yelena Isinbayeva. And the scene at the pole vault runway -- Isinbayeva's catwalk -- capped a fantastic night of track and field, one that saw the U.S. team win four medals: one gold, three silver.

LaShawn Merritt simply blew away all comers, including London 2012 Olympic champion Kirani James, to win the men's 400 meters, in 43.74 seconds, 2013's best time. Fellow American Tony McQuay took silver, in a personal-best 44.40.

Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic -- 19 years old -- finished third, in 44.52.

James? An improbable seventh, in 44.99.

On his way out, James told Universal Sports, "I just died. I don't know what happened."

For Merritt, the 2008 Olympic champion, this marked redemption, and in a big way. He has overcome injury and the embarrassment of a ban relating to the purchase of a male-enhancement product at a convenience store and weathered it all with dignity. McQuay was far from alone when he said at a late Tuesday news conference that he considered Merritt a "great role model."

Merritt said winning Tuesday was a "sweet moment." He also said, "I guess you could call it a comeback. But I don't feel like I ever left. I always continued to work hard and keep faith in my ability -- spiritually, physically and mentally. To come here … I was ready for it."

In the men's 800, Nick Symmonds took silver, in 1:43.55, the best-ever finish in the event by an American and the first medal for a U.S. man since Rich Kenah's bronze in 1997.

Ethiopia's Mohamed Aman won, in 1:43.31 -- the 2012 world indoor champ adding the 2013 outdoor title to his collection. He is just 19. Djibouti's Ayanleh Souleiman took third, in 1:43.76, the first medal for his country since Ahmed Salah won silver in the marathon at the Tokyo worlds in 1991. Souleiman is just 20.

Well before anyone even got to Moscow, the 800 was going to be a wide-open affair. Not one of the three medalists from the 2012 Olympics was here. Gold medalist David Rudisha of Kenya, who set a world-record 1:40.91 in London, was hurt. So was silver medalist Nijel Amos of Botswana. Timothy Kitum didn't make the team Kenya sent to Moscow.

No one in the world had run under 1:43 this year.

In the heats and semifinals, astonishingly, all the Kenyans were eliminated. That meant that -- for the first time in the 30-year history of the world championships -- the men's 800 final would be Kenyan-free.

Symmonds had finished fifth in London; fifth at the worlds in Daegu in 2011; sixth at the Berlin worlds in 2009. He is 29. He had blogged before coming here about how significant it would mean to him personally and professionally to leave Moscow with what he called a "shiny medal" around his neck.

Coming down the stretch, it looked like it might be gold. But with about 20 meters to go, Aman proved just too strong.

"Nothing is impossible," Aman said. "You have to believe in yourself and train."

Echoed Symmonds, "To be a medalist takes a lot of hard work, it takes a lot of luck as well. A lot of experience. At the age of 29 ... it feels like all the hard work and the sacrifice has paid off."

All of that set the stage for the pole-vault drama.

There are three superb female pole-vaulters right now in the world. The American Jenn Suhr won Olympic gold, the Cuban Yarisley Silva silver in London. And then, of course, there is Isinbayeva -- the 2004 and 2008 Olympic champion who won bronze in London.

Isinbayeva is also the 2005 and 2007 world champion. But in Berlin in 2009, she no-heighted. In Daegu in 2011, she took sixth.

Last year in London, she was back to her old ways -- with that third. But for her, third is not -- well, first. And, as she acknowledged after the jumps were all over Tuesday, referring to the last few years, "Sometimes I was desperate … sometimes I thought I should quit."

When all three cleared 4.82, or 15-9 3/4, it marked the first time since 2007 that three women had cleared that height in the same competition. This was, in every way, world-class stuff.

Plus, the crowd was totally into it. The runway and pit were set up in what, in an American stadium, would be a football end zone. The stadium was not filled -- not quite -- but attendance was, because of Isinbayeva, eminently decent. Plus, because of Luzhniki's overhanging roof, the crowd noise was loud, indeed.

Isinbayeva would later say it was the best crowd support she had received. Ever.

"Yes," she said, through a translator in Russian, "that was the best-ever. It was my home crowd. I felt like I was at home. What can you say? Being at home helps you. If we had the Olympics in Moscow [instead of London], the results would be different.

"I've gotten support in other countries. But tonight I knew. Tonight, everyone was behind me. I felt all my emotions. I absorbed it. The support was just colossal."

To have the stadium all to herself? She smiled. In English, she said that was "nice feelings."

Suhr held the lead until she missed her first try at 4.89. Then the pressure was on.

Isinbayeva cleared.

Game over, pretty much -- though the other two women tried to clear, it was not their night.

Suhr took silver, Silva bronze.

Suhr called it a "great competition," adding, "If I was a spectator, that's exactly what I would want to see."

She also said, "When I think of where pole vaulting was and where it is now, you have to thank Yelena for getting us there. making the spotlight, making it one of the premier events to watch. Look at today. Every event was over but everyone stayed to watch it. We have to thank her for really paving the road for that."

People, the era of Isinbayeva is back again. For emphasis, it was never finished.

Bryshon-ing Moment: the long road back

EUGENE, Ore. -- Three and a half years ago, Bryshon Nellum was shot in both legs on a street corner in Los Angeles. On Sunday, he made the U.S. Olympic Team in the 400 meters.

LaShawn Merritt, the 2008 Olympic champion, won the race, in a world-best 44.12 seconds. Tony McQuay of the University of Florida, the 2011 400 U.S. champion, took second, in 44.49. Nellum earned the third and final spot on the London 2012 team, in 44.8.

Bryshon Nellum is 23 years old. He is not only a symbol of perseverance, grit and determination. He is a young man who shows what it means to live the meaning of peace among the gang wars of Southern California.

"I'm more happy than anything that Bryshon got through," said his University of Southern California teammate, Josh Mance, who finished fourth in 44.88, and though having missed out on his own Olympic dream by a mere eight-hundredths of a second presented himself with such class and dignity that he could talk about Bryshon with those words, and more.

"He is the story of the meet," Mance said, adding a moment later, "He is a blessing."

Nellum was a star high-school quarter-miler. He went to USC with big expectations. Those were tempered by a hamstring injury his freshman year.

Eight months of rehab later, things started looking up. Then came the shooting.

It was early in the morning of Oct. 31, 2008. Nellum had been at a Halloween party near campus. He was near the corner of South 29th Street and West Vermont Avenue when, crossing the street to head back to his dorm room, a shotgun blast rang out.

He was hit in the left quad and the right hamstring. "When I first got shot," he said, "I just thought I was never going to walk again. It's crazy because I never did fall to the ground. I kept going -- like, run to safety. I hopped and skipped on one leg, to safety. Ever since then, I have been recovering."

He endured three surgeries, the most recent last year: "I slept through it. I dreamt it. I ate it. I woke up with it. I ran through it. I came a long way."

How long? "I was running on one leg at practice. Like a baby, I had to crawl before I walked. Before I ran. Those were the steps I had to go through in the process."

Travon Reed, a Los Angeles man, and Horasio Kimbrough, of Inglewood, Calif., were convicted in the shooting and sentenced to prison terms of 15 years to life, Nellum said.

Authorities have repeatedly and insistently said that Nellum has no gang affiliation. He said he went to court to watch the case, hoping to answer one question: why?

He said he got no answer.

He was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"You know what they say? Whatever doesn't break you only makes you stronger. So," he said, "I just feel like whatever happened, happened for a reason. Now I'm just trying to be a better person, and a better athlete."

Early this season, at the Mt. SAC meet in Walnut, Calif., Nellum ran a 45.1. That was a sign, he said, that this year could be something special. He won the Pac-12 championship. Then, though, he didn't make the NCAA final.

That happened for a reason, too, he said -- to get him ready for the Trials.

At a news conference, after Merritt had said he had genuine confidence in his young teammates but acknowledged that it was now time to do some "big-boy running," Nellum said he would be up to it.

After what he has been through -- what in London is there to be afraid of? Come on.

At that same news conference, Nellum made sure to thank his mother, LeShon Hughes, who has been with him for every step, figuratively and literally. She was here in Eugene to cheer him on. "Without my mom, none of this would have happened," he said, adding, "I would just like to say, 'I love you, mom.' "

He said later, "This is a dream come true. I'm here. I had the medal around my neck. I talked to the people. I got the team processing [forms] I have my American flag. My flowers. So I guess," and he paused, "it's true."

Oscar Pistorius and the power of will

DAEGU, South Korea -- It took 45 seconds, more or less, for Oscar Pistorius to show the world, again and emphatically, that sport holds no barriers to the power of will. Running on prosthetic devices that he puts on the way able-bodied athletes slip on shoes, Pistorius, the South African whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, turned 400 meters at the track and field world championships in 45.39 seconds, third-fastest in his heat, plenty fast to move him into Monday's semifinal.

It's not the case that walls of every sort came hurtling down because Pistorius raced here Sunday.

But it may well be that sport was forever changed.

Swimmer Natalie du Toit, who is also from South Africa, competed in the  2008 Beijing Olympics in the open-water swim; her left leg had been amputated at the knee as a teen-ager after she had been in an accident. Natalia Partyka, a Polish table tennis player, also took part in the Beijing Olympics; she was born without a right hand and forearm.

Even so, track and field remains the most important of the Olympic sports and Pistorius' case has generated publicity and controversy of a far different magnitude than either du Toit's or Partyka's.

Watching him run on his blades is a very different thing than watching du Toit swim or Partyka bat a little plastic ball. Running is, after all, elemental.

To get the okay to run on the blades against able-bodied athletes in the first instance took the okay of sport's top tribunal, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport.  Along the way, Pistorius became widely known in the press as the "Blade Runner."

Then, well after the legal case had been decided, some sport scientists started arguing that the blades gave Pistorius an unfair advantage against "ordinary" runners. Others said that was nonsense.

Big picture-wise, the matter launched an extensive debate world-wide about the technological boundaries of what's fair and what's not in sport.

Here, all of that was just noise.

Here, Pistorius got the ultimate respect.

To the others in the field -- he was just another guy in the race. He was somebody who might on a good day be a threat, and threats have to be dealt with.

"I know it's not easy, going through all this, and then coming to compete at a major championship," Chris Brown of the Bahamas, who won Pistorius' heat, in 45.29, said. "I wish him all the best, you know. But I came here to prevail."

American LaShawn Merritt, who raced two heats earlier, running a world-leading 44.35, said of Pistorius, "He ran the time to get here. I've had a little time to talk to him. He's a great person. He's dedicated and motivated. A great heart. I wish all the best to him."

Pistorius ran Sunday in Lane 8, all the way on the outside of the track. Like everyone else, he took off at the sound of the gun when, bang, the gun went off again. A false start.

A sense of dread settled over the stadium. But not over Pistorius. "I knew it was somebody else," he said, and it was -- Abdou Razack Rabo Samma of Nigeria, in Lane 5, who was promptly escorted out.

The gun went off again, and in Lane 7 Femi Ogunode of Qatar went out hard. Within 20 meters he was already ahead of Pistorius. But Pistorius did not press.

On Saturday night, Pistorius said, he had looked up Ogunode's best 400 times; Ogunode's best-ever was 45.12 last November and his 2011 best was 47.79 in April.

"Before my races, I research every single guy in the race, to know if he's playing a game or if he thinks he's got false hope," Pistorius said. So if Ogunode wanted to go out early now -- not to worry.

Over in Lane 6 -- there was Tony McQuay, the American, who had run a 44.68 in Eugene in June. Now there was someone to keep up with, Pistorius said, and that was the plan.

Indeed, for a brief moment at the top of the homestretch, Pistorius even held the lead.

Then McQuay started laboring. The thing about racing is you always have to adjust. Just go hard, Pistorius told himself, and you'll be in the semifinal.

It turned out that McQuay had a bad hamstring. He finished sixth.

Pistorius finished behind only Brown and Martyn Rooney of Great Britain, who crossed in a season-best 45.30.

"It's one thing getting here," Pistorius said after the race. "It's another thing being consistent here. I ran my second-fastest time," 32-hundredths off the 45.07 last month in Italy that got him here in the first instance, "and I'm happy with that."

That 45.07 was a nearly perfect effort, and at the world championships, you pretty much have to run in the 44s to be in the final eight. So it's hugely unlikely Pistorius makes the final.

No matter. Pistorius' first-round run in the 2011 track and field world championships was, by any measure, an extraordinary success. He was asked if he feels like a trailblazer and modestly said, no. "I don't really feel like a pioneer," he said.

That's not so. Here Sunday, Oscar Pistorius made history. He ran with the guys, and he was just one of them.