"Thank you, Meb"

Meb Keflezghi’s victory Monday at the Boston Marathon, so poignant, so soulful, proved an epic reminder of why sports matter. He is the first American man to win the race since 1983.

Keflezighi, who turns 39 in a couple weeks, is the oldest Boston Marathon winner since at least 1930.

His win, in 2:08.37, marked a soaring triumph of the human spirit — a year after the bombings that killed three people and wounded hundreds. Keflezighi ran with the names of the dead — a fourth, a police officer killed in the manhunt that ensued after the bombings — written on his bib, which read, simply, “Meb.”

Officials estimated that perhaps a million people turned out for the 2014 Boston Marathon, to cheer on the 36,000 runners, 9,000 more than usual.

To say that Keflezighi was not expected to win would be an understatement. After all, he had finished only 23rd at last year’s New York Marathon. Fifteen guys had faster personal-best times than Keflezighi going into Boston 2014.

Keflezighi is, of course, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist and the 2009 New York marathon champ. But he is no longer running in Nikes, having lost that sponsorship  — thought to be too old and too slow. Instead, he was kicking Monday in red-and-silver flyers from Skechers, the Manhattan Beach, California-based company better known for skateboard shoes.

Too old and too slow proved tactically brilliant Monday.

He went out in a two-man pack — everybody else let them go — with Josphat Boit. At Mile 16, Keflezighi made his move, running that split in 4:39, opening up a big gap. He said afterward he had to fight off a stomach bug about Mile 22. He then found the strength to keep ahead of Kenyans Wilson Chebet, the two-time Amsterdam Marathon champion, and Franklin Chepkwony, the 2012 Zurich Marathon winner.

Chebet finished in 2:08.48, Chepkwony two seconds behind that.

“Going through the last two miles, it was a challenge, it was difficult,” Keflezighi said at a news conference, adding a moment later, “Sometimes you just have to run and dig deep.”

The debate can begin now about where Keflezighi stands now in the ranks of American marathoners. Frank Shorter? Bill Rodgers? Alberto Salazar?

Keflezighi's 2004 silver made him the first U.S. man to win an Olympic marathon medal since Shorter, who won gold in 1972 and silver in 1976.  When Keflezighi won in New York in 2009? That made him the first U.S. man to win there since 1982.

For sure, this much  has to be acknowledged: Keflezighi has had to compete in an era when the East Africans have been in their ascendancy. What he has done — Olympic silver, New York and, now, Boston, and Boston in 2014 with all the symbolism — deserves appropriate recognition, and especially from anyone with any connection to the hardest thing that will forever define the distinct culture that is the marathon:

Putting on your shoes — red-and-silver, whatever — and stepping out the door.

Too old, too slow, can't do it -- all of that got beat back Monday. That is the essence of the marathon. And, in a very real way, it is the essence, too, of sports.

It's why he ran, and so many of thousands of others did, too.

“What he has accomplished should be a source of pride for all Americans,” Max Siegel, the chief executive officer of USA Track & Field, said in a statement that captured the moment.

“Since 2004, Meb has set the standard for what American marathoners can achieve. With everything that was at stake at the 2014 Boston Marathon, this must rank as one of the greatest American marathon performances in history.

“Thank you, Meb.”

USATF, Nike in apparent $500 million deal

USA Track & Field on Tuesday announced a groundbreaking 23-year deal with Nike apparently worth $500 million, an arrangement that holds the potential to transform the leading sport of the Olympic movement in untold ways in the United States for a generation. The Nike deal comes 13 days after USATF announced a seven-year partnership with Hershey, the chocolate maker. In February, 2013, USATF announced Neustar, the administrator of the .US top-level domain, as the three-year sponsor of its national road-racing championships.

Two more significant deals are expected to be announced next week.

“We are a more robust organization and, frankly, it is creating a lot of positive momentum for people who want to engage with us,” USATF chief executive Max Siegel said, adding of the Nike arrangement that while the Oregon company is “a significant part of our funding, it is one sponsor.”

Neither USATF nor Beaverton, Ore.-based Nike would disclose the financial details of the arrangement, which runs from 2017 through 2040. It is believed, however, to be at least double USATF’s current annual financial and in-kind support from Nike. Based on USATF financial documents and past media reports, that would put it in the $17-20 million dollar range annually.

“Nike was founded as a running company, and our passion for track and field is at the core of our DNA,” Mark Parker, the company’s chief executive and president, said in a statement, adding, “We have been a longstanding partner of USATF since 1991 and are extremely proud to extend our partnership and commitment to the sport.”

Half a billion dollars is the kind of money that might regularly fly around the NFL, NBA or Major League Baseball.

In Olympic sport in the United States, not so much — and particularly in track and field, bedeviled in recent years by virtually every manner of issue, challenge, problem, crisis, whatever imaginable, everything from rules imbroglios to political turf wars to governance matters to repeated doping scandals.

Despite it all, Team USA keeps racking up medals: 29 at the London 2012 Games, testament to the world’s best grass-roots, high school and college programs.

Because it's USATF, and it has such history, there is the easy temptation to wonder what's the catch in a deal of this magnitude.

For sure, the deal will likely result in more pressure for more track and field events in Oregon. On Tuesday, for instance, the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body announced that Eugene, along with Barcelona and Doha, Qatar, were candidates for the 2019 world championships; the IAAF will decide in November. The world championships, which date to 1983, have never been staged in the United States.

Will Nike be just “one sponsor”? It has provided USATF uniforms for the last six editions of the Summer Games. It is the driver behind the Oregon Project, the group founded more than a dozen years ago to promote distance running — where Alberto Salazar directs the likes of Mo Farah, Galen Rupp, Jordan Hasay, Shannon Rowbury and, now, Mary Cain.

Nike assuredly doesn’t do deals unless it has run the financial analysis and figures it makes sense, or more. Nike surely considered the present value of some $20 million annually, and the 2040 value of those dollars.

Then again, there’s this:  in a deal, it’s always good — for everyone — to find certainty.

What if this deal is indeed a game-changer for USATF and beyond, for the entire U.S. Olympic scene, prompting everyone to think big?

When he took over nearly two years ago as USATF’s chief executive, Siegel took a look at the federation’s financials. USATF had roughly $2.7 million in operating reserves. Now: $6 million. By year’s end: $20 million.

Siegel has simultaneously undertaken a campaign to use increasing amounts of interest income to pay for USATF operating expenses in Indianapolis.

With more money freed up, the theory is to use dollars for programming and athlete support.

“One of the things I wanted to make sure I was able to do was install a really solid financial foundation to give us plenty of runway to [develop] programming,” Siegel said.

USATF has long operated in a space where there is consistent, if not chronic, push-and-pull from an incredible array of interests — athletes, agents, organizers from the track as well as road racing, and more.

Half a billion dollars would seem to spell “leverage.”

Siegel would say only, “It definitely gives us the ability to set a very high standard, both in terms of accountability and expectation with our constituents. Every single program in the federation is going to benefit significantly in terms of the infusion of capital.

“We can engage with our leadership and set a new standard of leadership: ‘You are going to have to perform at a very high level.’ “

At the same time, as the pushback from the controversial disqualification of Gabriele Grunewald — and then reversal of that DQ — at the women’s 3,000-meters at the U.S. indoor nationals in February in Albuquerque underscored, USATF needs, now more than ever, to make sure its governance is up to a $500-million standard.

“What I have heard since I got involved with the sport is people talking about professionalizing, or raising the level of professionalism, in the sport,” Siegel said.

“I have read through all the levels of coverage, even the criticism of our sport, from Albuquerque. As CEO, I don’t disagree. For the last 20 years, I have been a talent and athlete advocate. We want to be a big brand and to make money. To do that, what these issues have done, have highlighted, is the need to sit down and make sure our governance lines up with the desired commercial outcome.”

The time is now, he emphasized for a wide-ranging governance review — “across-the-board.”

“We are looking at a pretty comprehensive governance review,” Siegel said, noting that while USATF has already announced a review of “field-of-play” decisions, “To be effective, you have to take a comprehensive look at all of it.” He observed that “special interests” tend “to be passionate,” and USATF “has done patchwork over the years.”

He said, “We need to take a look at governance change for the whole organization."

Championships, gala -- or what?

SOPOT, Poland — Let’s say you dropped into Sunday’s final day of the 2014 world indoor track and field championships. Further, you were a stranger to the sport, maybe kinda-sorta checking it out, a local from here in Sopot or Gdansk.

The program started at 2:50 in the afternoon. It wrapped up a little past 7 in the evening. That’s just over four hours. In those four-plus hours you saw — deep breath now — 14 events, two semifinals and 12 finals, as well as 17 medal ceremonies.

Essentially, you went to the circus. All that was missing was lions, tigers and bears.

This has to change.

At one instant Sunday, long jumper Erica Jarder of Sweden, the 2013 European indoor bronze medalist, launched herself into the pit exactly as, at the other end of the infield, Polish pole vaulter Anna Rogowska, the 2009 world champion and 2004 Athens bronze medalist, was going up and over the bar. Bad timing for Erica Jarder. She might as well have been invisible.

Later, the gaggle of guys running the 3000 meters circled the track as, again, Rogowska jumped at 4.7 meters, or 15 feet, 5 inches, the crowd clapping for her, paying the guys little if any attention. The 39-year-old defending champ, Bernard Lagat of the United States, had been shown pre-race on the big-screen. But what about the 21-year-old sensation Caleb Ndiku of Kenya, who would go on to out-kick Lagat and, you know, win?

A few moments later still, as American Chanelle Price, Poland’s Angelika Cichocka and Marina Arzamasova of Belarus were taking their victory laps -- Price the first American woman to win an 800, indoors or out, at a senior IAAF championship -- the guy high jumpers were, one after another, doing warm-up leaps over the bar. Halfway through that 800 victory lap,  the medal ceremony for Saturday’s men’s 60-meter dash broke in, the strains of “God Save the Queen” ringing out for Britain’s Richard Kilty, the photographers framing him just so with American Marvin Bracy and Qatar’s Femi Ogunode.

Everyone connected to track and field recognizes this problem. It is the deep, dark secret. A day like Sunday merely underscores the challenge, if you prefer a more connotatively neutral word.

Are the indoor worlds in particular a championships, or a gala? Like, what?

To frame it differently: why is pole vault a straight final but not high jump, which involved a qualification round?

Track and field is the the leading sport in the Olympic movement. But other sports — swimming, in particular — are gaining ground, and fast, which is why the International Olympic Committee last year elevated swimming and gymnastics into the top tier of Olympic revenue-sharers; the IAAF used to be alone in that top tier.

One of the main reasons: those other sports have made major changes in their presentations to the viewing public.

By contrast, track and field has pretty much stayed the same. A track meet in 2014 is essentially like going to a track meet in 1994 or 1974.

This has to change.

Of course, the essence, the beauty, of track and field is that it has an amazing tradition, including records from way back that you can compare to today’s athletes. (Let’s put aside, for just a moment, doping controversies and certain 1980s seemingly never-to-be-matched records.)

Track still has the capacity to produce amazing athletes from the world’s four corners. Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia is a marvel. The world record-holder in the event, she won the women’s 3000 Sunday, dropping everyone else like they were irrelevant, winning in 8:55.04. The Kenyan champion, Hellen Onsando Obiri, was more than two seconds back, in 8:57.72.

How best to spotlight a race like the 3k with a talent like Dibaba in it? While the women’s pole vault and men’s high jump are going on simultaneously?

The very last event on the program, the men’s 4x400 relay, produced a new world indoor record, 3:02.13, set by Americans Kyle Clemons, David Verburg, Kind Butler III, Calvin Smith Jr.; there was so much going on that any announcement was lost in the general din.

The IAAF on Sunday thoughtfully provided a stapled results package from both Friday and Saturday to the members of the press. Friday’s ran to 41 pages. Saturday’s, 42.

On the one hand, this was glorious for stat freaks.

On the other, this highlighted the magnitude of what’s at stake.

Why so many events? So much stuff?

Every sport has to evolve, and track is way, way too slow to get with the program.

Now — right now — is the time to do so.

These figure to be the last years of Usain Bolt’s reign. Since 2008, he has been — pretty much by himself — the face of track and field everywhere in the world.

Bolt doesn’t do the indoors. That right there — despite the fact that Sopot 2014 was, legitimately, the most important international meet of the year, because there are no world outdoor championships — tells you things need to be looked at closely.

Bolt isn’t even here for ceremonial purposes. Why not?

These are also the final years, presumably, of Lamine Diack’s years as IAAF president.

Now is the time to lay the groundwork for the big changes that have to happen, beginning with the next Olympic cycle in 2016 — and, better yet, before, with the 2015 worlds in Beijing and the 2016 indoors in Portland.

The IAAF, to its credit, recognizes it has issues. That’s why it is launching the world relays, the first edition in Nassau, Bahamas, in May.

Giving some more credit — the IAAF mobile-phone app is the best on the Olympic scene. Flat-out.

But more, much more, needs to be done.

If you go now to a major swim meet, you see the way it can be done.

In theory, a swim meet should be the most boring thing imaginable. What could be more dull than watching eight or nine people swim laps with their heads at or under the water?

Instead, USA Swimming in particular, and FINA, the international federation, have made swim meets electric. At the U.S. Trials, there are fireworks. Indoors. As a matter of course, the athletes now come out from behind curtains to be introduced individually, with spotlights and to the beat of rock music. It generates a sense of competition and drama.

There’s nothing like that at a major track meet. The internal TV camera feed goes down the line as racers stand in front of the blocks. But only Bolt has understood over the years how to really play to the camera — that is, to play to the crowd. And because there are way too many competitors there’s no time for individualized music.

It’s not just the indoors meets at which there’s too much happening. At last summer’s world championships in Moscow, or on an average night at an Olympic Games, there typically are seven or eight events going on over two-and-a-half or three hours, sometimes longer.

On Day 6 of the Moscow 2013 worlds, for instance, one of the great men’s high jump competitions in history had to compete for attention with the heats of the men’s 4x400 relay; the women’s triple jump final; the women’s 200-meter semifinal; and, then, in succession, finals in the women’s steeplechase, women’s and men’s 400-meter hurdles and, finally, the women’s 1500 meters.

Absolutely, some leading voices within track and field recognize the issues — among them Sergey Bubka of Ukraine and Seb Coe of Great Britain — and are mindful of the need for change.

Bubka’s mid-winter pole vault-only meet in Donetsk, Ukraine, for instance, with its rock-and-roll back beat, offers an intriguing model. What if, for instance, a particular world championships session was one discipline only?

Or: what if the qualifications were set beforehand and, say, a particular discipline at a world championships was limited to eight or 12 competitors? Couldn’t the current Diamond League system, if it were tweaked, offer a way to make that happen?

Most critically: how do you get geeked-up teenagers and 20-somethings to want to come to track meets all stoked out like at slopestyle and snowboard events? No -- seriously.

The International Olympic Committee is taking 2014 to undertake studies leading to potentially wide-ranging reform; an all-members assembly has been called for Monaco in December.

What if the IAAF undertook a similar process?

All reasonable ideas ought to be on the table.

Now.

Is winning gold ever 'failure'?

SOPOT, Poland — Over two days, the drama and excitement built, Ashton Eaton chasing his own world record through seven events of the heptathlon. It came down to, ultimately, the final event, the 1000-meter run. To set a new mark, the math tables said he needed to run a time that was, actually, one second slower than his personal best.

He started off great. The announcer said he seemed on his way. The crowd roared. His wife, Brianne Theisen Eaton, who herself had won silver in the pentathlon the night before, was in the stands, cheering. On the bell lap, he seemed to be digging deep.

He crossed the line. Everyone turned to the clock.

No.

He was one second slow.

“I wish I could have gotten the record,” he told the crowd moments later, adding, “I’m not a robot. But I try.”

This all makes for a fascinating case study in success and “failure,” all neatly encapsulated in the person of Ashton Eaton, who — let us all acknowledge — is the gold standard, the most consistent thing going right now in American track and field.

If USA Track & Field were smart — this is a huge if — it would wake up, smell the Courier Coffee (Portland reference, get with it, people) and make Eaton the focus of, like, everything between now and the 2016 world indoors (oh, in Portland) and then the Summer Games later that year in Rio.

The guy is the real deal. He is solid. In every way.

In “failure,” Ashton Eaton should have inspired kids everywhere to ask their high school coach about the heptathlon or the decathlon or, at the least, to want to be a lot like him. For emphasis: everyone should "fail" like this. This was what it is like to test yourself and find that that even when you are best in the world, like Ashton Eaton, you can still discover things about yourself to become better still for the next test.

Because life always holds a next test.

Eaton is the London 2012 Olympic and Moscow 2013 world decathlon champion; he is also the Daegu 2011 silver medalist. He holds the decathlon world record.

He is now indoor world champion at both Sopot 2014 and Istanbul 2012.

The gold Saturday means he has now won the Olympic, world and two indoor titles within just two years.

He and Brianne — she competes for Canada — train in Eugene with coach Harry Marra. They comport themselves in seemingly every way with modesty, humility and decency.

Eaton’s prior three heptathlons had produced world records. The IAAF was offering $50,000 for any new world record here. Before the competition got underway, however, he insisted Thursday he truly was not thinking about a new mark.

“It’s all about pushing the limits and seeing where it takes you. The IAAF invites us,” meaning the combined-event athletes, “because they saw our performances and wanted us to compete here. I’m not going for a world record, I’m competing to win and whatever else happens is a cherry on top.”

Friday’s events — the first four of the seven — had left Eaton just one point behind world-record pace.

In Saturday’s morning session, precisely at the stroke of 10, Eaton ran the 60-meter hurdles in 7.64 seconds. That was just four hundredths off his lifetime best. It was also four-hundredths better than he did in Istanbul. That put him nine points ahead of world-record pace.

An hour later, in the pole vault, he cleared 4.90 meters, or 16 feet, 3/4 inch, and made it look easy. The same at 5.0, 16-4 3/4. He skipped 5.1, electing to go straight to 5.2, 17-3/4. There he missed his first two attempts. He cleared the third, seemingly more on will than anything else, veering to the right as he cleared.

As he hit the pad, both arms went up, touchdown-style. He was, still, nine points ahead of world-record pace.

“It was ugly,” he said later. “That’s the beauty of the decathlon. It doesn’t have to be pretty. At that point, it was — screw technique, just get the body over the bar.”

He missed his first two attempts at 5.3, 17-4 1/2. The music started pumping for the third try and he pumped his right fist in time. But he came up well short, indeed under the bar.

That meant he needed 2:33.54 in the 1000 to break the world record. His personal best: 2:32.67, at the 2010 NCAAs.

That, per the schedule, had to wait until Saturday night.

Other American athletes came through with some shining results as the evening wound around: in a major upset, Nia Ali, coached by Moscow 2013 110-meter men’s hurdles silver medalist Ryan Wilson, won the women’s 60 hurdles in a personal-best 7.80, defeating Australian Sally Pearson, the London 2012 100 hurdles champ, who finished second in 7.85; Francena McCorory won the women’s 400, in 51.12 seconds; Marvin Bracy took silver in the men’s 60 in 6.51; Kyle Clemons, who got on a car accident en route to the airport on his way to Poland, took bronze in the men’s 400, in 45.74.

Brianne, escorted by Marra, made it out to the seats about five minutes before Ashton’s race.

He went immediately to the lead and held it at every split but one, at 400 meters. At 800, the timing clock said 2:06.20, and he kicked it into high gear, gritting his teeth, pumping his arms.

He crossed the finish line in 2:34.72.

For sure, it was good enough for gold. Everyone knew that. Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus would end up taking silver, Thomas Van Der Plaetsen of Belgium bronze.

After Eaton saw the time, he slapped his fist in his hand. He shook his head. He took a few steps and then slapped the railing in disgust.

There will naturally be critics who say — that’s sportsmanship?

Attention, critics: Ashton Eaton is competing for two days with the other guys. They enjoy a fraternity and camaraderie. The only guy he was miffed at was himself, for a second, over a second.

We ask our Olympic champions to be real. Here’s real:

“I think,” he said, “I was just mentally weak.”

He also said, “I don’t know. I should be satisfied with the gold medal. But at this point — indoors, if I don’t get a world record, it feels like silver, like a loss.”

And: “I know, it’s kind of awkward. It’s the position I put myself in. I think I expected a lot from myself. I wanted the world record, too,” after the pole vault, when it became apparent it was again attainable. “I’m disappointed.”

This is what he was telling himself in the 1000: “Ashton, you need to be tough.” But: “I just didn’t push myself hard enough. Clearly, I mean, the last lap, I went, and I was like, let’s see what I have, and I had a lot — I was like, you idiot.”

What, then, he was asked, is the lesson from all this?

Good question, he said.

“If I hadn’t gotten silver in Daegu, I don’t think I would have learned from ‘quote’ failure. Not getting a record indoors, that’s a failure for myself. I’m not sure what I have learned yet. But I will reflect and I know I will learn something. Maybe a little bit about myself.”

A good place to start will be with Marra. Ashton and Brianne hugged each other under the stadium as their coach had this to say:

“Bottom line is this: you come to a competition, whoever you are, whatever event, you try to show to the world you’re the best. Ashton Eaton competed well. Bottom line is to win. He put himself in to position to try to go get a world record. You can’t put a damper on that; you can’t put a damper on that. Otherwise, the sport would go down the tubes.

“It’s about head-to-head competition. If you can, you get the world record. Would it have been nice? Of course. But it didn’t happen. OK.

“Solid,” Harry Marra said, “all the way through.”

This Eaton couple is really good

SOPOT, Poland — From the bang of the first gun Friday, it was crystal-clear Ashton Eaton is truly one of the most remarkable and versatile athletes of our time. On the track, he seemingly does everything so well. Why doesn’t he get more due? Running in Lane 8 in the 60-meter dash, Eaton got off to a quick start and, outlined in Team USA red against the blue track, an even-faster finish. He crossed in 6.66 seconds, equaling a personal best.

Eaton is of course the 2012 Olympic decathlon champ. He is, too, the decathlon world-record holder. The heptathlon, the indoor version, offers seven events instead of 10. Eaton’s last three heptathlons have produced world records as well — at the last world indoors, in Istanbul in 2012, he racked up 6,645 points.

To watch Eaton Friday — and, for that matter, the Ethiopian middle distance runner Genzebe Dibaba — is to bear witness to athletic greatness.

Track and field is lucky to have them both.

It is lucky to have anyone, frankly, not named Bolt because the sport cannot be all Usain all the time. Since 2008, when the record-breaking rampage in the sprints began, if most casual fans were asked to name just one track and field athlete the answer would, of course, be Bolt.

Generally speaking, an overarching question for track and field this weekend is easy to frame. These Sopot indoor world championships, as IAAF president Lamine Diack noted at a news conference Thursday, make for the biggest meet of the year, with some 600 athletes from roughly 140 nations. There will be a first edition of the world relays — in the Bahamas in May — but there are no outdoor world championships in 2014.

Bolt is not here in Sopot. He does not do the indoors.

For track fans, as Diack noted, these indoors are indeed a big deal. For everyone else?

The situation is further complicated when the likes of American Nick Symmonds, a silver medalist in the 800 at the 2013 Moscow worlds — he of the new Brooks shoe contract, he of the book due out in June — announces after failing Friday to qualify for the 800 finals that he is done, forever, running indoors.

“It’s a season to have fun and try different things,” Symmonds, always candid, said, adding, “There’s one championship, I want to be out there, I want to give my sponsor the best exposure I can,” and here he waved his shoes at the camera, “so here I am, having a good time even though I’m not in the finals.”

With Dibaba, the major challenge for the sport is she does not speak English — at a time when English is increasingly the global language. Eaton, if he were seemingly anywhere but Oregon, could go to the mall unpestered. Good for him. Bad for track.

First, Dibaba.

Her running style is elegant. Moreover, she comes from running royalty. Her older sister, Tirunesh, has five Olympic distance-event running medals, three gold; another sister, Ejegayehu, is the 2004 Athens 10k silver medalist; a cousin, Derartu Tulu, is the 1992 and 2000 10k gold medalist.

Genzebe Dibaba won the 1500 in Istanbul. In London, a hamstring injury took her out. At the 2013 Moscow world championships, she finished — surprisingly — eighth in the 1500.

This winter, she has simply been on a tear.

Within two weeks in early February, she set two world records — 3:55.17 in the 1500 and 8:16.6 in the 3k. For good measure, she also ran a two-mile world best, 9:00.48.

Here, because this is only a three-day meet, she said she had to choose between the 1500 and the 3k. She opted for the 3k, and in Friday’s heat made it look too easy, running away from the field in 8:57.86.

In the heats, they typically don’t run any faster than they need to — yes, that was indeed 40 seconds slower than that new world record.

She said afterward, “The race went very well. I didn’t want to lead in the early laps. I only wanted to move up with five laps remaining, and I executed my plan. I know I have a great time in this event, and it gives me great confidence.

The Kenyan running in the second heat is the one I have to watch out for,” she said, referring to Hellen Onsando Obiri, who finished behind Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain in a much-faster heat. Jamal, moving up for the first time from the 1500, finished in 8:53.07, Obiri, the reigning Kenyan champion, in 8:53.31.

“My goal is to win,” Dibaba said. “I don’t think I’ll have a hard time taking gold, God willing.”

Eaton’s elemental goal is to win, too.

In seemingly every way, Eaton comes off as the perfect package. He is not only an athletic talent, he is handsome, well-spoken and humble. And he is now one-half of track’s power couple, married to Canadian Brianne Theisen. Last summer, when he won gold in the decathlon at the world championships, she won silver in the heptathlon; they train together in Eugene, Ore., under coach Harry Mara.

"Eatons. Meet the Eatons. We're a combined events family." @AshtonJEaton @briannetheisen #Sopot2014 pic.twitter.com/N6G3Jk19EH

— Jon Mulkeen (@Statman_Jon) March 7, 2014

At a news conference here, Eaton had said, “My coach will definitely be the most tired tomorrow. This is the first time [Brianne and I] have done a world indoor championships together. This will be the first time we’ve competed [in the combined events] at the same meet in such close proximity.

“So when I’m doing the long jump, she’ll be doing shot put; we’ll be 20 meters away. It’ll be fun to kind of look over and cheer her on and see how she’s doing and also get some encouragement. We do practice together and it’ll increase our performances being able to feed off each other.”

The pentathlon is a one-day event. Theisen Eaton, with 4768 points, a Canadian record, finished a close second Friday behind Nadine Boersen of Holland, with 4830.

Just 237 points separated first and eighth in the pentathlon — it was the closest-ever contest at the world indoors.

If the 2013 Moscow heptathlon silver marked a breakthrough, this 2014 Sopot silver served as confirmation that she, too, is a world-class talent.

It also served as evidence of her mental resolve -- the thing that all champions have, and must show under pressure.

Theisen Eaton started off the long jump with two fouls before jumping 6.13 meters, or 20 feet, 1-1 1/2 inches.

After that second foul, she said, he — preparing for the shot put — smiled, clapped his hands and said, “Keep going.”

She added, “That is the exact moment when I looked for kind of comfort because I felt scared. It’s great competing with him.”

She also said, “It’s almost like unfair, because no one else gets that.”

During the 800, her final event, “I knew that he would be right there, [saying], ‘Come on, Bri, pick it up, pick it up.’ I thought, ‘I can’t, it’s hard.’ I could just hear him cheering.”

He said, “I am proud of her. I wish she could have gotten one of those long jumps. But that is the way it goes.”

In the night’s only other final, the men’s shot put, American Ryan Whiting took gold with a toss — on his fourth throw — of 22.05,  or 72-4 1/4.

For the first time ever at a world indoors, five guys went over 21 meters. Whiting,  however, was the only guy in the pack to go over 22.

In Oregon, as noted, Eaton is something of a rock star.

Elsewhere in the United States? The reality is, Marcus Mariota, the quarterback for the Ducks’ football team, would be better known, and by a lot.

That is the — now seemingly eternal, if not infernal — challenge.

The days when Bob Mathias, Milt Campbell, Bill Toomey, Rafer Johnson, even Bruce Jenner were the man among men — those days are long, long gone.

All Eaton does is relentlessly produce.

The long jump — the heptathlon's second event of seven — seemed to doom any world-record bid. Eaton jumped a season-best 7.78, 25-6 1/4. Again, that was best in the field. But in Istanbul two years ago he jumped 8.16, 26-9 1/4.

Then, though, In the evening session, in the shot put, he crept back toward world-record pace, throwing 14.88, 48-10. In Istanbul, his best had been 14.56, 47-9 1/4.

After three events in Istanbul, Eaton had been at 2823 points. After three in Sopot: 2794. Just 29 off.

In the high jump, he banged out 2.06, or 6-9. In Istanbul, he went 2.03, 6-8.

His overnight score in Istanbul: 3654. In Sopot, after that huge effort in the high jump: 3653.

Andrei Krauchanka of Belarus would clear 2.21, 7-3, the outright best-ever within a heptathlon high jump at a world indoors. That pulled him to 3583 points overnight, 70 back of Eaton.

The hurdles, pole vault and 1000 are set for Saturday.

“That is another thing,” Brianne Theisen Eaton said. “I just want to go to sleep and feel at home, you know. Get ready for him for his next day, bring him dinner so he can just lay in bed and relax.”

“I’ve been running great hurdles this year so try to run great again,” Eaton said. Same in the pole vault. “And if I have to go for a record in the 1000, I’ll do it.”

Winter Games XC -- why not?

SOPOT, Poland — The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics rang the bell on a year of imagination and fresh thinking for the International Olympic Committee. The IOC’s all-members session immediately before the opening ceremony produced, over a day and a half, 211 comments from the floor.

The signal was clear for the new president, Thomas Bach, under the guise of his “Olympic Agenda 2020” program, as the IOC launched itself toward Monaco in December and another all-in assembly — he has a clear mandate for change, the members urging a fresh look at, well, pretty much everything.

In short: Be visionary. Be imaginative. Be creative.

So: here Thursday, the question emerged anew as track and field — still the most important of the international sports federations — prepared for its three-day indoor world championships.

Why not cross-country at the Winter Games?

Of course there’s already cross-country skiing at the Winter Olympics.

What about cross-country running?

“I think we have to contribute to the fight of this direction,” Lamine Diack, the president of the track and field federation, the IAAF, said at a news conference, adding a moment later, “Certainly, ourselves, we are looking at that.”

To begin with the most obvious challenge:

It’s commonly accepted that the Olympic charter says Winter Olympic sports must be played on snow or ice.

Here is what the charter says, word for word: “Only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports.”

Parse that as you will.

Here is what Bach has said, albeit in a different context, and parse this, too: “The Olympic charter is not set in stone. We have to evolve, adapt to modern times.”

The next issue: what about the weather?

It was of course warmer in Sochi, with its palm trees and 55-degree weather during the Olympics, than in Sopot. But Sopot, a cute little beach town that boasts the longest wooden pier in Europe, jutting out into the Baltic Sea, was not so bad Thursday at 37 degrees Fahrenheit or, if you prefer, almost 3 Celsius.

Great cross-country weather.

It was warmer most days in Vancouver in 2010 than it was in Sopot. And Torino in 2006 often saw  weather comparable to Thursday in Sopot.

To be clear, these are the indoor championships at Sopot's Ergo Arena; cross-country is not on the competition schedule. The weather reports here, or in Vancouver or Torino, are winter talking points.

The weather report for Friday for Pyeongchang, South Korea, site of the 2018 Winter Games? High of 44. (7 Celsius.)

Cross-country running is not supposed to be like Fourth of July at the Santa Monica beach.

As the respected British track outlet Athletics Weekly has pointed out, cross-country often takes place on “muddy fields, thick turf or dusty trails,” but it has “also regularly been seen on snow.”

The 2012 European championships, just outside Budapest? Snow, icy ground, “vicious sub-zero temperatures,” and a “huge success.” The 2013 worlds, in Bydogoszcz, Poland — on an icy course.

Going all the way back to the 1992 cross-country world championships? On a snowy course in Boston.

Now, another positive for cross-country on the Winter Games program:

There are, in all, 204 national Olympic committee. Of those, 88 were in Sochi; of those 88, only three were African — Morocco, Togo and Zimbabwe. Putting cross-country on the program would do wonders for what the IOC calls “universality,” or the notion that the Games truly belong to the entire globe, especially the Winter Olympics.

There’s room on the running calendar for cross-country. It’s a fall and winter sport (in the northern hemisphere). The IAAF world championships are now held in odd-numbered years — 2013, 2015 and so on, meaning the Winter Games fall perfectly. The Olympics could offer spots for men, women and relays.

For those who simply want to argue that cross-country flatly can’t belong on the Winter program: explain basketball, a sport that stretches across the winter months if there ever was one, on the Summer Games program. You have 10 seconds.

Finally, there’s history — beautiful history and fantastic tradition — to consider:

Cross-country was part of the Summer Games in 1912, 1920 and 1924.

On race day in Paris in 1924, temperatures reached 103 degrees, or 40 celsius. Adding to the racers’ woes, as the story goes, were fumes from a nearby industrial chimney.

Only 15 of the 38 racers finished.

The alarm was such that cross-country was yanked from the program — and, of course, has never returned.

The first-place finisher in that 1924 team race was none other than one of the greatest long-distance Olympic runners of all time, Finland’s Paavo Nurmi.

Between 1920 and 1928 Nurmi won a record nine Olympic gold and three individual silver medals; in his career, he would set 22 official and 13 unofficial world records; there is a copy of a Waino Aaltonen statue of him in, among other places, the garden of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, just a couple kilometers down the road from where the IOC is based.

Six years ago, the long-distance running aficionado Seppo Luhtala of Finland, too, had an idea — what about cross-country at the Olympics? Luhtala is the author of ‘Top Distance Runners of the Century’ and the producer of many films, including ‘Running is Your Life,” which followed Lasse Viren’s life and training prior to the 1980 Moscow Summer Games.

The line of Finnish distance running goes from Nurmi to Viren — Viren winning double gold in the 5 and 10k in both the 1972 and 1976 Games; he would finish fifth in the 10k in 1980.

Through his book, Luhtala got to know many of the world’s great distance runners. In 2008, three of them wrote a letter to the then-IOC president, Jacques Rogge, urging him to add cross-country to the Games as either a Summer or Winter sport, saying the problems of 1924 were “certainly unique” and it would be “wonderful” to give the world’s best cross-country runners the “chance to compete” at the Games.

The three signers: Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele, Paul Tergat.

It is difficult, given their many achievements, to know quite what to highlight:

Gebrselassie, from Ethiopia, is the 1996 and 2000 10k gold medalist; Bekele, also Ethiopian, the 2004 and 2008 10k gold medalist and 2008 5k gold medalist; Tergat, from Kenya, is the 1996 and 2000 silver medalist, the 2000 Sydney 10k considered one of the best races ever.

Tergat is now an IOC member.

Diack is, above all, a realist. He recognizes fully that the Winter Games sports federations are unlikely to welcome the addition of the IAAF to their show with, shall we say, champagne.

If cross-country can get on the Summer Games program — he allowed as that would work, too.

The Summer Games, though, are already so big.

There’s way more room for growth on the Winter side. And if ever it might be cross-country’s best chance to get into the Winter show, it’s now.

“Now,” Diack said, “we have to push.”

Eugene: track ghetto or capital?

Eugene, Oregon, is a beautiful little town. It has many virtues. The issue at hand is whether it ought to be the track and field ghetto of the entire United States. A more charitable way to put it, of course, would be to call it the track and field capital of the United States.

Because after the announcement this week that the NCAA Division I outdoor track championships from 2015 through 2021 will be held at venerable Hayward Field, there's little doubt that Hayward, and Eugene, and for that matter, Oregon, are poised to be -- if not flat-out are -- at the epicenter of the track and field scene in the United States for essentially the next decade.

Query: is that a good thing?

Hayward staged the 2013 NCAAs. It will play host to the meet next year. Going through 2021 will make it nine straight.

Each year in late May or early June, Hayward puts on a Diamond League meet, the Prefontaine Classic. In 2014, Hayward will be the site of the world junior championships; in 2015, the USA nationals; and in 2016 -- just as in 2012 and 2008 -- the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Meanwhile, Portland -- just up the road -- recently won the right to put on the 2016 world indoor championships.

In Portland, the Oregon Project, with coach Alberto Salazar, is home to some of the world's leading runners, including Mo Farah, Galen Rupp and, now, American teen sensation Mary Cain. Olympic and world decathlon champion Ashton Eaton and Nick Symmonds, silver medalist in the 800 meters at the 2013 Moscow world championships, headline the list of athletes who in recent years have come out of Eugene.

Depending how you see it, this week's NCAA announcement is either brilliant or yet another turn in a disturbing trend to further niche-ify track and field -- to consign the sport to a distant corner of America, to a remote college town in the late-night Pacific time zone where the sport is destined to get noticed every so often, if then.

It must be noted, of course, that track and field in Oregon revolves around Nike. Without Nike there is virtually nothing.

In its elation over the 2021 thing, the University of Oregon put out a news release that maybe was just a little bit over the top. It quoted athletic director Rob Mullens as saying, "Being the birthplace of running in the United States, Track Town USA offers the most unique experiences for both student-athletes and fans alike."

When the biographies of Jesse Owens, Glenn Cunningham, Jim Ryun, Billy Mills and other greats get around to claiming Eugene as the "birthplace of running," that will surely be news. As will the fact that the University of Chicago played host to the NCAA championships virtually every year, 13 times, from 1921-36 (they were at USC in 1934, Cal-Berkeley in 1935).

Meanwhile, giving credit where it is due: boosters of the move to see so much action in Eugene, like Vin Lananna, the farsighted senior university associate athletic director who is also president of the entity that is itself called TrackTown USA, envision Hayward being a permanent site for the NCAA championships, like Omaha, Neb., is for men's baseball, or Oklahoma City for softball.

And that's fine.

But there are two key distinctions.

One, Omaha's convention and tourism bureau, for instance, recognized that it was unlikely to be a so-called "big-league" town like nearby St. Louis or Kansas City. Those cities actually really do have NFL and Major League Baseball teams.

So to build the Omaha "brand," they aggressively sought the College World Series and have bid successfully in recent years for events such as the U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming. They are concededly after a wholesome, family-style vibe.

Eugene is hardly in competition with Portland or Seattle. And maybe track and field is after the family scene and maybe it's after the die-hard -- nobody is quite sure what audience it's after. That's for sure one of the challenges. Another of the many issues facing the sport is that, if you've never been to an evening at the track before, you often leave after three -- or more -- hours feeling you're not quite sure what you've just seen.

At any rate, the key distinction is this:

Track is the No. 1 sport at the Summer Olympics. You can like it or not, Omaha and Oklahoma City, but baseball and softball are no longer in the Games.

Moreover, everyone in Eugene and, for that matter, Oregon, you can this it or not as well, but the IAAF, track's international governing body, wants more in the United States. Way more. They look at this country, and they see New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, big cities, all these huge and important markets, and the only activity seemingly going on of note is in Eugene, or Portland, and Portland is hardly a top TV market, and they ask -- huh?

And that, friends, is altogether a reasonable question if you want track and field to stop being a niche sport in the United States.

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.”

Portland wins 2016 world indoors

MONACO -- The U.S. team has long been No. 1 in the world in track and field. Hosting the world in track and field? Not so much. The U.S. has not played host to a major championship since 1992, in Boston. Before that, Indianapolis staged the world indoor championships, in 1987. Of course, Atlanta and Los Angeles put on the Summer Olympic Games. That was 1996. And 1984.

To say that this has been a recurring sore spot with track and field's governing body, the IAAF, would be putting it mildly. When, oh when, would the United States -- and, more particularly, USA Track & Field -- ever step up?

On Friday, Portland, Oregon, won the right to stage the 2016 world indoor championships, USATF president Stephanie Hightower asserting that under the direction of federation chief executive Max Siegel and in concert with TrackTown USA president Vin Lananna there is energy and synergy to "rebuild the brand of track and field in the United States."

The IAAF Council awarded Portland the 2016 event amid a spirited campaign that also saw it give Birmingham, England, the 2018 world indoors.

The UK is now lined up to stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games (in Glasgow), the 2016 world half-marathon championships (Cardiff, also awarded Friday), the 2017 world track and field outdoor championships (London, at the same stadium that staged the 2012 Games) and, now, the 2018 world indoors.

Talk about legacy from the 2012 Olympics.

The 2014 world indoors will be staged March 7-9 in Sopot, Poland.

Birmingham had staged the 2003 world indoors, IAAF president Lamine Diack at the time calling them the best-ever, and but for the fact of an American bid would probably have won going away for 2016.

"This is a sport that needs to nurture its roots in the United States," UK Athletics chief Ed Warner acknowledged Friday after all the political horse-trading was said and done.

The IAAF's "World Athletic Series," which includes its major championships, is sponsored by adidas; the current deal goes through 2019. It sometimes can seem as though everything sports-related in the state of Oregon is underwritten by Nike. How the two will mesh come 2016 remains uncertain.

Warner also said, "I feel as though Christmas has come early for British athletics."

For Portland and USA Track and Field, as well.

Teen middle-distance sensation Mary Cain announced here Friday that she would be forgoing college and turning pro, and would be based in, where else, Portland, with coach Alberto Salazar, and the Oregon Project, with stars such as Olympic medal-winners Mo Farah and Galen Rupp. Her plan, she said: "To throw myself into insanely fast races and have no pressure."

The Portland 2016 plan:

A three-day meet in March 2016, tentatively March 18-20, the week after the NCAA indoor championships, at the Oregon Convention Center, with seating, Lananna said, for "8,400-plus."

A new 200-meter track will be built and then, as a legacy of the event, repurposed for use -- somewhere. It will be the only indoor track in the track-crazy state of Oregon, Lananna noted.

TrackTown USA served as the organizers for the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials at venerable Hayward Field in Eugene, on the University of Oregon campus. It will also serve as the local organizing committee for next year's IAAF world junior championships, also in Eugene.

The 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials will be back in Eugene, based at Hayward.

All this begs the obvious:

It's fine, maybe even great, that TrackTown has lit a -- or, maybe more accurately, capitalized on the -- spark in Oregon. There's a lot of Nike money behind all this, in Oregon. At the same time, Oregon is a long way away from pretty much everywhere else. Anyone who has ever been to Eugene knows it is hard to get to. And almost no one who gets drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers ever goes, wow, that was my first choice.

When was the last time you ever heard any of your European, Asian or African friends say, gee, you know, I want to vacation in the United States and I think I'm going to go to -- Portland? San Francisco, absolutely. New York, definitely. Disneyland, for sure. Portland? Get real.

Look, there are a lot of reasons to like Portland. Excellent coffee. Fine wine. Lewis and Clark. But it is not a major market, and to argue otherwise strains credulity.

If, as Hightower asserted, track and field is truly to be re-branded in the entire United States, it needs to think about a strategy that gets people where it's at in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, the Bay Area, Boston, DC, Detroit, Seattle, Phoenix, Tampa, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver and on and on.

Asked about that, Siegel said "television properties" were in the works without offering more specifics. Lananna volunteered the example of the MLS Portland Timbers soccer team, saying that a few years ago it was nothing and now it draws "rabid" crowds in a "crazy environment," adding, "We hope to do the same … we feel very confident we will be able to do take those same steps forward."

Those would be giant steps, indeed, off a three-day track meet in an indoor convention center in Portland, which -- let's not forget -- will be staged amid the hoopla of NCAA basketball March Madness.

It's worth noting something else. Cain said Friday that when she was younger she was a swimmer and idolized Michael Phelps. Phelps, by putting himself back in the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency testing pool, has taken his first steps toward being back in the water in Rio in 2016. Don't kid yourself. This, in the sphere of Olympic marketing, is what USATF is likely up against in 2016, too.

Still, give USATF and TrackTown USA credit. This is its first step, a welcome step in bringing world-class international track and field back to the United States after more than two decades. It's Portland, sure, but you have to start someplace, and that someplace has to be where you know it's going to work.

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.