31 medals (at least), all with class and character

RIO de JANEIRO — For a generation, USA Track & Field has been chasing an elusive goal: 30 Olympic medals.

Here in Rio, in a run at Olympic Stadium that underscores the major up-pointing trend in the American track and field scene, the Americans have — through Saturday night — won 31. The men’s marathon is yet to come Sunday. Those due to run include Meg Keflezighi, silver medalist at Athens 2004 and winner of the 2014 Boston Marathon.

On Saturday night, Matthew Centrowitz Jr. won the men’s 1500m in a front-running, tactically savvy 3:50 flat — the first gold for the United States in that race since 1908. In the men’s 5000, Britain’s Mo Farah won, completing the 2012 and 2016 5000m and 10,000m distance double, the American Paul Chelimo crossing the line second. Moments later, Chelimo was disqualified for a lane infringement; then, later, in the evening, he was reinstated, the first U.S. men’s 5k medal since Tokyo 1964.

Those were medals 28 and 29.

Then came the women’s and men’s 4x400 relays. Both American teams won, medals 30 and 31, Allyson Felix anchoring to a sixth straight Olympic victory for the U.S. women, all four thereafter carrying around the stadium a banner that said, “Thank you, Rio.”

To read the rest of this column, please click through to NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2bcINiF

The ups and downs of 'hardest team to make'

EUGENE — As Sunday’s final-day action at historic Hayward Field got underway, the crowd was told — this is the mantra of the 2016 Trials — that the U.S. Olympic track and field team is “the hardest team to make.” It’s not. The swim team is way harder. But more on that in a moment.

What is indisputably true: the 10-day run of the Trials is a study in emotion. One, two or three in Eugene is typically cause for joy. What, though, about four, five or farther down?

Amid all the celebrating, and there was plenty of it Sunday with nine finals that saw the likes of teenager Sydney McLaughlin (third place, women’s 400 hurdles, first 16-year-old on the U.S. team in 40 years) and 21-year-old Byron Robinson (second, men’s 400 hurdles) secure Rio spots, the real story of the Trials is, and always will be, disappointment.

And how to handle it.

Track and field’s global governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, had reconfigured the Rio 2016 schedule so that Allyson Felix could try for the 200-400 double. Here, Felix won the 400. On Sunday, though, she finished fourth in the 200, one-hundredth of a second out.

“Honestly, I’m disappointed,” Felix said. “All year I planned for this race, and for it to end here, it’s disappointing. But when I look back and see everything that happened,” in particular an ankle injury this spring, “I still think it’s quite amazing that I was able to make this team. I feel like everything was against me.”

The tension and drama of the Trials makes for a once-evey-four-years study in how to handle what life gives you — or throws at you.

As Jenny Simpson, the Daegu 2011 world championship gold medalist who on Sunday won a ferocious women’s 1500 in 4:04.74, put it, “On the starting line, you have that balance of confidence and doubt,” adding that track and field is, and has to be, a "really selfish sport — it’s you against the world.”

She added, “The selection process makes you go through the fire,” adding in a reference to the Trials, “The gift we get from this really horrible and brutal experience is that when we get to the Games we have a sense we have done something difficult already and we are prepared.”

Erik Kynard, the 2012 Trials runner-up in the high jump, went to London and won silver. Here Sunday, he won the 2016 Trials. Asked what he learned from 2012, he said, with a laugh, “Jump higher.”

Robinson, after the 400 hurdles, “I’m shellshocked. I’m overcome with joy.” He also said, “I just wanted a chance, you know?”

Generally speaking, top-three at the track and field Trials go to the Games. Everyone else stays home.

With all due respect to Charles Barkley, and his assertion that sports stars are not role models — sorry, they are. That’s the case all the more in track and field; participation in track and field in high school and college remains robust.

“Knowing we’re doing it right, knowing we’re doing it the right way — hopefully we’re inspiring young women,” said Shannon Rowbury, the Berlin 2009 worlds bronze medalist who took second in Sunday’s women’s 1500 in 4:05.39.

Math makes plain that roughly nine of 10 of those who showed up here to compete in Eugene will not be heading to Rio. But it’s even harder to make the U.S. swim team.

Some numbers:

The swim Trials, in Omaha this month, held 52 spots. In swimming, moreover, qualifying is, again speaking generally, not top-three; it’s top two.

Because of doubles or even triples — the likes of Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Maya DiRado will each compete in multiple events in Rio — the field of 52 going to Rio will actually be 45.

That’s out of 1,737 entries, according to USA Swimming.

Math: 2.5 percent of those in Omaha are heading to Rio.

In track and field, there are 141 spots, including relays.

Not all spots get filled because Americans will not have met qualifying standards set by track’s global governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations.

By meet’s end, per USA Track & Field, there were 1,077 declared entries, 879 individual athletes.

To make the math as apples-to-apples as possible, and acknowledging that 141 is a loose number — 141 over 1,077 is 13.1 percent.

When you’re part of that magical 13 percent, it’s easy.

“I couldn’t ask for more,” Tori Bowie, the women’s 200-meter winner, said after Sunday’s racing. She took third in the 100, and now gets to double in Rio.

“I can’t believe this is happening right now,” the teenager McLaughlin said, adding a moment later, “My mind was on finishing the race and eating a cheeseburger.”

When you’re not?

Compare and contrast:

In the women’s 800 last Monday, Alysia Montaño fell on the final backstretch. She wailed. She fell to her knees. She cried.

This made for great TV.

At the same time, if a junior-high or high school athlete did this, what would the likely reaction be from his or her coach?

Meeting the press after with 2-year-old daughter, Linnea, in tow, Montaño said, “This is it, you know. You get up and you’re, like, really far away and your heart breaks.”

From there, it turned into something akin to a therapy session, Montaño saying her “biggest struggle this year” had been “finding peace and why I’m even trying for an Olympic team,” calling it all that “emotional baggage.”

Montaño was justifiably lauded two years ago when, 34 weeks pregnant, she ran the 800 at the U.S. national championships — a role model, for sure, on many levels.

Here?

“Eight years of my life as a professional runner, my entire professional career, has been a farce, basically,” she said. “Now everyone’s talking about the Russians not running in the Olympics but they’re missing the point. The IAAF is a corrupt institution that is still running the Games.”

It wasn’t until a day later that Montaño — who is active on social media and says her fans help her “pick up the pieces” — filed this to Twitter, congratulating Kate Grace, Ajee’ Wilson and Chrishuna Williams, who finished 1-2-3 in the race:

https://twitter.com/AlysiaMontano/status/750476446796124160

The sequence that sent Monaño to the track also took out Brenda Martinez. She won bronze at the 2013 Moscow worlds in the 800.

Martinez would say after the 2016 Trials 800, “I felt great but I got clipped from behind. That’s track and field. I’ve got to get ready for the 1500. Some days it doesn’t go your way. Today it was me.”

Instant-karma department: on Sunday, Martinez got third in the 1500, by three-hundredths of a second, finishing in 4:06.16. She got there with a finish-line dive.

“However people want to take it,” Martinez said. “I feel like it had to happen for a reason. That’s the way I believe life works, you know: you’re going to get tested. If people can see what I went through, then maybe they won’t doubt themselves the next time something happens to them.”

Make no mistake: Martinez’s third was very popular, with the crowd, with Rowbury and Simpson and with many others.

Simpson made a point of saying she had reached out after the 800 to Martinez. And for all that there is in, and justifiably, in being “selfish,” Simpson said, “I went to the starting line with a little bit more love … and a litttle bit less selfishness than in the past.”

Emma Coburn, the steeplechase winner here, posted to Twitter:

https://twitter.com/emmajcoburn/status/752293842729054208

In London four years ago, Leo Manzano won silver in the men’s 1500. He was the first American to medal in the 1500 since Jim Ryun in 1968.

On Sunday in the rain, Manzano, battling Ben Blankenship for the third and final spot in the 1500, reached for a gear he had often found before. It wasn’t there. Manzano took fourth, in 3:36.62 — not even half a second behind Blankenship, 3:36.18.

Matthew Centrowitz won the race, and easily, in 3:34.09. Robby Andrews got second, 3:34.88.

The race proved the fastest Trials 1500 ever, Centrowitz breaking Steve Scott’s 1980 Trials mark, 3:35.15, and the top-four putting down the Trials’ quickest top-four times.

In the London 1500, Centrowitz took fourth. “I'm ready for whatever they throw at me in Rio,” he said Sunday. “If it’s a 3:33 race, I’m ready for that.”

Manzano: “I wish the result had been different. Unfortuantely, it’s not. You’ve got to face the facts, and congratulte your teammates. They fought hard today. It wasn’t my day today.”

In the men’s 110-meter hurdles, Aries Merritt won bronze at last year’s world championships in Beijing, running on kidneys that were so bad he underwent a transplant — his sister the donor. Merritt is the 2012 London gold medalist and, as well, the world record holder in the event, 12.8.

In Saturday’s 110 hurdle final, Merritt finished fourth — like Felix in the 200, exactly one-hundredth away from third. He crossed in 13.22 seconds. Jeff Porter and Ronnie Ash went 3-2, both in 13.21; University of Oregon star Devon Allen ran away with the event, 13.03.

Merritt afterward: “Given the circumstances, I did the best I could with what I had and I came up a little bit short. I’ve come to grips with it. But it couldn’t be worse than being told you’ll never run again. I’ve been to the Olympics, I’ve won the Olympic Games, I’ve broken the world record. I mean, someone else can have a turn.”

In that same race, Jason Richardson finished fifth, in 13.28. He is the London silver medalist and the Daegu 2011 world champion.

His reaction:

https://twitter.com/JaiRich/status/751951488054808576

Jillian Camarena-Williams, a two-time Olympian, is 34. She and her husband, Dustin, 38, who will be the head trainer for the U.S. track team in Rio, married after the Berlin 2009 world championships. They moved to Tucson after the 2011 worlds. Their daughter, Miley, was born on the very day of the women’s shot put event at the 2014 championships in Sacramento.

“Our relationship is all about track meets,” she said, laughing.

The thing is — it’s not.

Camarena-Williams herniated her back at the London Games. She needed surgery. Then she had to decide — should I try to come back? If so, why?

The answers:

“I missed the sport and the people that are in it, the people that have helped me throughout my career,” she said in a quiet moment Sunday.

She also talked about what she called “my journey.”

Track brought her a husband and now a family: "It’s more about the places we were able to go, people we were able to meet than the outcome. I have talked to young people and brought my medals,” including a third in Daegu in 2011, the first medal of any kind for an American woman in the shot in the history of the track worlds.

“I love these medals. They represent that journey to me. But they just sit in my drawer. They don’t hang in our house. We’re porud of them. But we’re way more exicted about the things we were able to do along the way than the actual hardware.”

After the third throw — of six — here, in the rain, Camarena-Wiilliams stood third. But she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Heading out for her final throw, in round six, Camarena-Williams’ sister, 36-year-old sister, Christi, a nurse in Sacramento, told her, “Just smile. Go out there and enjoy yourself.”

Michelle Carter, on her sixth and final throw, won, in 19.59 meters, 64 feet, 3-1/4 inches. Raven Saunders and Felisha Johnson finished 2-3. Camarena-Williams ended at 18.81, 61 8-1/2.

A lot of family was here in Eugene for Jillian and Dustin. Her mother. Two of her three siblings. A cousin with her two daughters. His brother. Two sets of his aunts and uncles.

Coaches.

And, of course, 2-year-old Miley.

“It’s a village that supports us to get [to the Olympics] in the first place,” Rowbury would observe. “It’s a commitment to trying to be the best you can be, a commitment to the people who support you along the way and a commitment to honor your country.”

"No matter what I do in life," Robinson said, "if the people back home aren’t proud of me I know that I didn’t really live up to expectations. Knowing that they are behind me, I know I can achieve anything."

After Jillian Camarena-Williams' final throw, no tears. She went looking for her husband and their daughter.

“Sometimes,” she said Sunday, holding the baby, “you are overtaken with emotion. So much can happen. I feel like I’m in a really good place with our family and where we’re at. It was disappointing, but I have to put a smile on my face and be grateful for what we have, outside the track.

“And we have a lot.”

How to make the Trials (even) better

EUGENE — Now we know exactly how many super-hard core track geeks there are in this little college town, the self-proclaimed track capital of the United States: 2900. That’s how many people showed up Wednesday to watch the women’s hammer throw inside historic Hayward Field.

For the men’s hammer, later Wednesday, the crowd swelled to 4200.

Look, they tried. Again, the hammer throw took place inside Hayward. That’s called thinking out of the box.

As these 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials move past the halfway mark, the meet — indeed, the experience — has by almost any measure not only met but surpassed expectations. Until a cloudy and then rainy Thursday, even the weather had cooperated — Oregon’s high blue skies providing a brilliant canopy for the tableau below, and performances like Justin Gatlin’s best-in-the-world-in-2016 9.80 seconds in the men’s 100 meters.

Even so, with the spotlight on for the second half of the meet, now is not the time to declare that all in the track and field universe is well.

Because these Trials, aiming toward the 2016 Olympics and beyond, to the 2021 world champioships back at a refurbished Hayward, are just the start.

Now is precisely the time, amid the glow of these Trials, to think about how — in the interest of making track and field that much more viable — to make the next editions of the Trials, in 2020 and 2024, that much more attractive.

For emphasis, these Trials have left little to be desired. Don’t have a ticket? Come watch on the big screen behind Hayward and listen to a live band. Not in Eugene and want to watch? Livestreams galore.

Even so, the U.S. track and field Trials could be so much more.

For starters, this meet not only could — but should — be six days, not 10.

For another, fairness and decency — along with TV appeal — demand a review of any number of standards, in particular field sizes and qualifying procedures, both for the Trials and the Olympics themselves.

Case in point:

Rudy Winkler, a 21-year-old college kid from Cornell who competes in Clark Kent-style glasses, won the men’s hammer, with a throw of 76.76, or 251-10. He does not know whether he will be invited to go to Rio. That’s not only counter-intuitive but insane.

The reason: the complexity of track and field’s rules. At the Games, there’s a field of 32, per the sport’s international governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations. No American thrower, pre-Trials or at the meet, met the Olympic qualifying standard. Now Winkler, and the 2-3-4 finishers, must wait to see whether they get a Rio invite.

Another example:

In men’s javelin, both Cyrus Hostetler and Curtis Thompson broke the meet record in going 1-2. Hostler is Rio bound. Thompson — not.

Normally, of course, it’s top three.

But Thompson doesn’t have the Olympic qualifying standard, 83 meters, 272-3. He threw 82.88, 271-11, a lifetime best. And 12 centimeters short.

Riley Dolezal was third, 79.67, 261-4. Third is good. But not, in this instance, good enough for the Olympics.

Hostetler went 83.24, 273-1. So he’s good.

So is Sam Crouser, who took fourth, with 78.06, 256-1. He had the standard coming in.

Who else is good? Sean Furey, who took 11th, with 69.45, 227-10. That’s nearly 45 feet back. But Furey met the standard in June 2015.

So — first, fourth and 11th are en route to Rio.

How is any part of that supposed to make sense to the average person or the would-be fan?

A couple more examples:

But for a handful of athletes, the women’s hammer throw amounted essentially to an all-comers meet. That’s fine for an all-comers meet. But not the Trials.

On Thursday, they ran three first-round heats of the women’s 1500. This gets a little complicated.

There were three flights of 10. Three dropped out before the start, for various reasons — Kate Grace won the 800 and passed on the 1500, for instance. So 27 women raced for 24 spots in Friday’s semifinals. One of the three who ended up not making it: Sarah Brown, who gave birth just four months ago, seemingly her every move here being documented by a film crew.

A crash in the first heat knocked down Alexa Efraimson and Rachel Schneider. They got up and ended up qualifying on time, 4:14.4 and 4:22.94. Brenda Martinez, who got tangled up with Alysia Montaño in Monday’s 800 and didn’t make top-three in that event, won the second heat in 4:23. Then came the absurdity of the third round: 10 women, each of whom had run 4:10 or faster just to make the Trials, had to run just 4:22 to advance.

In sum — that third heat of 10 eliminated no one.

That’s beyond silly.

As for the three heats Monday in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase — after just two laps in each round, a sizable margin had opened up between the leaders and stragglers. Again, these are the Trials, supposed to be a test of the best.

What needs to be struck: the balance between the Trials between a culminating high-performance event and the kind of thing where people get to go home and say, I took part at the Trials.

The approriate revisions could, would, should and ought to bring all the drama of the Trials to the place it should be — the Trials.

Like Thursday’s women’s steeple final. Emma Coburn won, in the sixth-fastest time ever, 9:17.48. At the bell lap, Stephanie Garcia had been second. She ended up tripping on the final barrier and finished fifth. Courtney Frerichs, 9:20.92, and Colleen Quigley, 9:21.29, went 2-3.

Like the women’s shot put earlier Thursday: Michelle Carter, one of the sport’s class acts, won on the final throw, 19.59 meters, 64 feet 3 1/4 inches, to qualify for her third Olympics.

Also Thursday, the heats in the women’s 100 hurdles. Coming into the U.S. Trials, 11 of the top 15 performers this year had been Americans. Keni Harrison, the American record holder (12.24 here in Eugene in late May), went 12.57 in the first heat. In the fifth, 2013 world champion Brianna Rollins, the former record holder (12.26, 2013 U.S. championships), went 12.56.

Whether the 2020 Trials are here in Eugene remains an open question. The 2000 and 2004 Trials were in Sacramento; the 2017 national champioships will be there, too. Even so, in preparation for 2021, the odds would have to favor being in Eugene in 2020 — just as in 2008 and 2012 as well.

For 2024, much depends on whether Los Angeles wins those 2024 Summer Games. The International Olympic Committee will pick the 2024 winner in September 2017 at a meeting in Lima, Peru. Also in the field: Paris, Rome and Budapest.

Looking ahead, the big-picture audience is not Eugene. Or, just to be obvious, those 2900 people.

The mission has to be how to grow track and field beyond the geeks.

This has been the avowed goal of both Max Siegel, chief executive of USA Track & Field, and Vin Lananna, president of the local Eugene organizing entity, called TrackTown, who is also head coach of the U.S. 2016 men’s track and field team.

As Lananna put it, it’s to “really grow the awareness of today’s track and field heroes” nationwide.

Siegel, in a news conference Tuesday, noted that when he took over four years ago, he had two overarching goals for USATF — organizational stability and driving innovation.

Stability: USATF’s annual budget is now $36 million, twice what it was four years ago.

Now it’s time to delve, big time, into the innovation.

Part of this involves changing the three-ring circus atmosphere that attends far too many meets, including the Trials.

On Thursday, for instance, the men’s triple jump prelims, with 2012 Olympic champion Christian Taylor, were being run at the same time as the heats — over on the track, literally a few feet to the right — of the women’s 100 hurdles. Same issue later Thursday: on the track, women’s 400 hurdles  and, in the infield, men’s discus and run-throughs for the women’s triple jump.

Pick a day, almost any day, and it’s the same challenge: on Sunday, the men’s long jump competed for attention with the women’s high jump, featuring 32-year-old Chaunte Lowe and teen sensation Vashti Cunningham.

For the average fan, this presents a logical dilemma: where to look, and when?

Part of the solution: tighter scripting of the show flow. That's what this is. It's a show.

Part of it, too, involves reconfiguring the meet as entertainment. Again, that’s what it is. The purists are still going to show — how about a little 21st-century reach-out?

The swim Trials, just concluded in Omaha, featured fireworks, a waterfall, a sound-and-light show, individual athlete introductions, rock music and showtime bits on the big screen that the sold-out audience ate up — ongoing banter between pool-deck hosts (and former Olympic medalists) Brendan Hansen and Kaitlin Sandeno and, most nights, a crowd dance-off.

Here — brief athlete intros, yes. The rest? Why not?

At NFL games, there’s a flying camera. Here, no. Why not?

Track and field is statistics-heavy. Like football, baseball and, in the Olympic context, swimming. Yet at the swim Trials officials make readily available a day-of-event listing that provides individual athlete biographies as well as essentials such as records and Olympic histories.

The track Trials — no such thing. Why not?

Moreover, there is no iPhone or Google Play app that would make, say, such stats and results immediately availble to fans in the stands. Why not? It’s 2016, not 1972.

And then the production glitches that you’d think should be so obvious — at these Trials, the loud music from that soundstage frequently drowns out news conferences in the media tent just feet away. All sports, and particularly track and field, depend on story-telling. How to tell those stories when you can’t hear a word?

This problem was exactly the same in 2012. Complaints must have fallen on deaf ears. Maybe from that music.

For all these observations, the biggest thing that needs to be assessed is the length and scheduling of the meet.

This means both the daily and overall runs.

An evening at the swim Trials runs to two hours, maybe just a little more.

Consider Thursday’s Hayward schedule. It is profoundly unrealistic to expect the average fan — maybe with kids in tow, and track and field assuredly wants to reach out to young people — to show up at 3:30 p.m. and stay until roughly 8 p.m., when the women’s steeplechase wrapped up.

After nearly a week of brilliant weather, the rain arrived Thursday in Eugene. That didn’t help. But it rained during the 2012 Trials, too, and it’s simple common-sense that rain in Oregon is always a distinct possibility.

In non-Olympic years, meanwhile, the U.S. outdoor championship runs to only four days.

The Trials go on for 10, with a formal off-day in the middle.

If the reason for that is to benefit hotels, restaurants, bars and the Eugene Chamber of Commerce — that’s not a good reason. This is a track meet, not a convention.

If the idea is to mimic the Olympic schedule — the four-day meet produces world championship teams that win plenty of medals over the more-extended run.

These Trials started, sort of, last Thursday with a 20-kilometer walk in Salem, the state capital. The formal opening ceremony took place last Friday here at Hayward.

So: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

Off-day Tuesday.

Wednesday: hammer throw, women’s and men’s.

Now the final four days: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

If four days is unrealistic for a Trials, there’s no good reason not to consider shrinking 10 days to six. Doing so would considerably reduce costs for virtually all stakeholders: athletes, fans, officials, the local organizing committee, USATF, TV, media and, not incidentally, law enforcement and security.

Six days is eminently do-able. Here is one plan of how it could work:

Day One and Two: 100, 400 as well as prelims in 800. The 10k could go on One, heats of the 5k on Two.

Day Three and Four: 400 final, 400 hurdles prelims, 200 prelims, 1500, 800 finals.

Day Five and Six: 200, 400 hurdles, 1500 and 5k finals.

Decathlon: Days One and Two. Heptathlon: Four and five.

Steeple: Days One and Three, Four and Six (men’s/women’s, or vice-versa).

Javelin:  One and Three, Four and Six.

Discus: Two and Three, Four and Five.

Hammer: One and Two, Five and Six.

Triple jump: One and Two, Three and Four.

High jump: Two and Three, Five and Six.

Long jump: Three and Four, Five and Six.

Pole Vault: One and Two, Four and Five.

Shot put: Five.

This does not need to be rocket science. Track and field is a sleeping giant. But like most things, it would work better with a heaping dose of common sense.

Justin Gatlin, on track for 2016

EUGENE, Oregon — Before Saturday's big race at the 42nd Prefontaine Classic, the men's 100 meters, Justin Gatlin's coach, Dennis Mitchell, offered just a few words.

Nothing about times. No 9.5-craziness, no records this or that.

"Coach just gave me a handshake and said, 'Lay one down,' " Gatlin would say later.

Gatlin laid down a wind-aided 9.88 for the win. This was a no-doubter. Gatlin crossed the line with his left arm raised, index finger pointed to the sky: No. 1. At least on a Saturday in May in Eugene. More, here in Eugene next month at the U.S. Trials and presumably in August in Rio, to come.

The men's 100 capped a day of sun-splashed performances at the Prefontaine Classic, the one and only major U.S. outdoor stop on the international track and field circuit, with athletes aiming to round into shape for the 2016 Summer Games and, for the Americans, the Trials, back here at historic Hayward Field.

The 2016 Pre, before 13,223, termed by house announcers a sell-out crowd -- not so much, as pockets and patches of bare seats throughout the stands would attest -- marked the second act of a four-part track and field drama this year in Oregon. Part one: the 2016 world indoors in March in Portland. Part three: the 2016 NCAA championships, in about 10 days. Part four: the U.S. Olympic Trials, in late June and early July.

A number of stars proved no-shows at the 2016 Pre, citing injury or otherwise. Among them: U.S. sprint champion Allyson Felix, American long-distance runner and Olympic silver-medalist Galen Rupp and Ethiopian distance standout Genzebe Dibaba.

Those who did turn up put on, especially for May in an Olympic year, a first-rate show:

In the women's 100 hurdles, American Keni Harrison ripped off an American-record 12.24, the second-fastest time ever. Only Yordanka Donkova of Bulgaria, in 12.21 in 1988, has ever run faster. Brianna Rollins, who had held the American record, 12.26 in 2013, finished second Saturday in 12.53.

Emma Coburn also set an American record, in the women's 3k steeplechase, 9:10.76; Bahrain's Ruth Jebet won the race in 8:59.97, just four-hundredths ahead of Hyvin Kiyeng of Kenya. American Boris Berian won the men's 800 in a convincing 1:44.2; just a couple years ago was slinging hamburgers at McDonald's; in March, he won the world indoor 800; a few days ago, the Berian saga took on yet another dimension over a contract dispute with Nike.

In the women's 100, American English Gardner ran 10.81 for the win, with two-time Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica eighth and last, in 11.18; in the women's 200, American Tori Bowie ran 21.99, best in the world in 2016, with Holland's Dafne Schippers second in a really-not-that-close 22.11.

Kirani James of Grenada and LaShawn Merritt of the United States added another chapter to their extraordinary rivalry in the men's 400, James winning in 44.22, Merritt just behind in 44.39.

Jamaica's Omar McLeod continued his 2016 dominance in the men's 110 hurdles, winning in 13.06; Americans went 1-2-3 in the men's 400 hurdles (Michael Tinsley with the victory) and the triple jump (Will Claye going 17.56 meters, or 57 feet, 7 1/2 inches on his sixth and final jump, celebrating with a leap over the hurdle set up for the women's steeplechase, only to see Christian Taylor, next, go 17.76 meters, or 58-3 1/4, the two of them meeting after for a quick embrace).

In the men's javelin, Africans went 1-2: Ihab Adbelrahman of Egypt went 87.37, or 286-08; Kenya's Julius Yego took second in 84.68, 277-10.

Without Dibaba in the women's 1500, Faith Chepngeti Kipyegon of Kenya ran a Hayward Field record, 3:56.41. The prior mark: 3:57.05, from Hellen Obiri of Kenya. On Friday evening, Obiri, running this year in the Pre at the 5k, won in 14:32.02.

Also Friday evening, Brittney Reese won the women's long jump, in 6.92 meters, 22 feet 8 1/2 inches; Joe Kovacs the men's shot put, in 22.13 meters, 72-7 1/4; Alysia Montaño-Johnson the women's 800, in 2:00.78; and Mo Farah, the British distance star, the men's 10,000 meters, in 26:53.71. The top five guys in that 10k all crossed in under 27 minutes.

And then there was Gatlin, who figures heading into the Trials and Rio to have the spotlight trained on him, big time -- both for who he is and how, for most people who know about Gatlin's realistic quest to take down Usain Bolt, the way it all turned out in 2015.

At the 2015 Diamond League meet in Doha, Qatar, two weeks before last year’s Pre, Gatlin went 9.74. Only four guys have — ever — gone faster: Bolt, 9.58 in Berlin in 2009; the American Tyson Gay, 9.69, Shanghai, 2009; 2011 100 world champion Yohan Blake of Jamaica, also 9.69, at the Athletissima meet in Lausanne, Switzerland, 2012; Asafa Powell, also Jamaican and the first racer in history to run sub-10 more than 100 times, 9.72, Athletissima, 2008.

No less than five times in 2015 did Gatlin run faster than 9.79.

Back for the 2015 worlds at the Bird’s Nest in Beijing, where Bolt had raced to Olympic gold in 2008, Gatlin settled into the blocks in Lane 7 with a win streak that stretched past two dozen.

The year, and even the rounds, pointed to Gatlin. He had cruised through, winning his semifinal in 9.77. Bolt had stumbled in his semi, collecting himself late to win in 9.96.

Then, though, came the electricity of the final itself.

Gatlin got off to a slow-ish start. Even so, midway through the race, Gatlin held the lead.

Then, though, came another stumble.

This time, it was Gatlin, trying to hold off Bolt, in Lane 5.

Maybe 20 meters from the line, Gatlin lost his form.

Bolt won, in 9.79.

Gatlin took second, in 9.80, one-hundredth of a second back.

Asked Friday at a pre-Pre news conference on how many occasions he has watched the 2015 worlds final, Gatlin said, “Countless times. I can’t lie about it,” adding, “I have to make sure I study what I did wrong and also what I did right, and also my opponents as well.

“It was,” he said, “a learning curve for me.”

Sure. But, specifically, how?

“One thing I learned,” he said, “is you can’t be too greedy in trying to get speed. There’s a certain point in the race where it’s humanly impossible for a person to get any faster. So, for me, it’s just to maintain that speed, stay in control of my technique and just go straight through the finish line.”

And this:

The American sprinter Mike Rodgers typically gets out to a fabulous start. Powell performs the race's technical transitions as well as anyone, ever. The Canadian Andre DeGrasse and Gay are going to, in Gatlin’s words, “come like a bat out of hell toward the end of the race.”

“So,” he said, “these are things that you predict — weeks before the race even starts.”

Gatlin didn’t run the 100 at the 2015 Pre. Instead, he focused on the 200, which he won in a — to use his word —blazing 19.68. Gay won the 100 in a comeback statement, 9.98.

For Gatlin, by design, aiming toward the 2016 U.S. Trials and Rio, this Olympic year has gotten off to a considerably slower start.

“The 100 meters,” Gatlin said, “it’s a crazy race. It’s about balance. You don’t want to take too much away from your start and have a powerful finish, because now you’re behind. So you have to have a good solid start. You have to have a good strong finish.”

He also said, “Going into this season, you see me having good starts. The times haven’t been as blazing as last year. But you can see the strength of me coming on at the end.

“I think maybe in Beijing,” meaning this year’s race, at the May 18 IAAF World Challenge event, “Mike Rodgers had a step or two on me coming out of the blocks. I just stayed calm and just commanded the race the second half.”

Gatlin won that 100 in 9.94, Rodgers crossing in 9.97.

“It’s like blinking,” Gatlin said of the various parts of a well-executed 100.

Meaning this:

The ordinary person typically doesn’t think about blinking but, rather, just does it: “Blink, blink, blink,” he said. In the same way, the time to process what the component parts of that well-run 100, and how and why, is in training. When it’s race day, it’s go time.

Just go. That’s how you run the 100 in the blink of an eye.

Gatlin went on, crafting a new analogy, referring to the champion boxer:  “I’m taking it almost like a Floyd Mayweather kind of — taking it round by round,” adding that he was “learning my technique, learning my craft, sharpening my skills and have my strongest round be the last round, the finals. Last year,” another boxing reference, ”I came out like a Mike Tyson — just swinging, knocking everything down.

“This year, I really — on a time level — don’t have a point to prove. I’ve shown the world I can run consistent, fast time. I’m strong, and I’m dominant. So this time I just want to make sure I get to the big dance, and I’m ready.”

The world lead coming into Saturday’s race at venerable Hayward Field in the 100: 9.91, by Qatar’s Femi Ogunode, at a meet April 22 in Gainesville, Florida.

Gatlin, in Lane 3 on Saturday, broke well, keeping an eye of sorts on Ameer Webb, in Lane 6, who has a solid Hayward history and had been running well, obviously in shape, early this year.

By halfway, the race was essentially over, assuming Gatlin could keep it together.

No problem.

The wind, which had been under the legal limit of 2.0 meters per second, blew just above during the race: 2.6. That made Gatlin's 9.88 wind-aided. After flashing that No. 1 sign, Gatlin jogged with the finish line tape wrapped around his neck, like a Bar Mitzvah streamer -- all to big applause.

Powell took second, in 9.94; Gay, third, in 9.98.

Rodgers got fourth, in 9.99; Ogunode, fifth, in 10.02; Webb, sixth, 10.03. China's Bingtian Su took seventh, 10.04. DeGrasse, who tied for third at least year's worlds, came up eighth, 10.05.

"I think all my races this year have been really calm and really relaxed," Gatlin said afterward, clutching a pair of Kenyan flag-colored flip-flops that a fan had thrown him.

Relaying the essence of many discussions with Mitchell, his coach, Gatlin has sought to make the course for 2016 elegantly simple:

“We just want to win. That is the motto for this year: just win. You know, it’s not about predicting what time is going to win, or [is going to get] the gold medal. It’s about getting on that line, competing, executing your race. Once you come across the line, you look across at the board and can be shocked like everyone else at the good time.”

That is yet more evidence of maturity and experience talking.

A lot of water has run under a lot of bridges since Gatlin was just 22 and won gold at the Athens 2004 Olympics in the 100, in 9.85.

In February, he turned 34.

The “20-something Justin was just happy to be there,” he said.

“You know, I think the 30-something Justin understands that now he is leaving behind a legacy — for himself, his family and his fans. So it’s something that’s a little bit more important. When I step to the line, I’ve got to make sure I’m not too antsy but at the same time not too calm, and not suck myself into the ambiance of the stadium and celebrating before the race is even over.”

Feds to international sports movement: drop dead

The U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday flipped a big, fat middle finger to the international sports movement. On what grounds? And to achieve, exactly, what?

Did anyone at the U.S. Attorney’s office in Brooklyn stop for even a second to think about the consequence — to the Los Angeles 2024 Summer Games bid, to the possibility of an American World Cup men's soccer tourney bid for 2026, to the interests of U.S. athletes everywhere — in opening a criminal investigation into allegations of state-sponsored Russian doping?

It is very, very difficult to make even — a little law talk here — a scintilla of sense from what, at first impression, seems like nothing so much as an outrageous, politically driven abuse of prosecutorial and law enforcement discretion.

In the United States, the law does not criminalize sports doping.

Italy, just to pick one — sure. But not the United States.

Yet here come the feds, reportedly launching a criminal investigation into sports doping. By athletes who are not Americans. What?

Indeed, as the New York Times first reported, the Department of Justice, through that Brooklyn prosecutor’s office, is “scrutinizing Russian government officials, athletes, coaches, anti-doping authorities and anyone who might have benefitted unfairly from a doping regime.”

It said the investigation “originated” with the FBI.

Because there isn’t a specific doping-related statute in U.S. law, federal prosecutors are apparently eyeing fraud and conspiracy charges, the Times reported.

This is, at best, legal gymnastics.

Moreover:

Imagine if the Russians, or the Chinese, or the French, pick anyone anywhere, decided to go after Americans: accusing U.S. athletes or their entourage or even American government officials of a crime under that particular nation's laws, basing the whole thing on allegations of sports-related doping.

What would the reaction be?

How is this any different?

The United States is not the world’s police officer nor, hardly, its prosecutor, judge and jury.

Who in the confines of some office in Brooklyn thought otherwise would serve any sort of American interest in our complicated, nuanced world?

News of the action from that U.S. Attorney’s office came as the International Olympic Committee announced Tuesday that re-tests of samples from the 2008 Beijing Games had turned up 31 positives, IOC president Thomas Bach calling it a “powerful strike against the cheats.”

Backing up for a moment:

You have to be a complete idiot to get caught doping at the Olympic Games. Everyone knows the authorities are going to be testing. And that samples get saved for years.

So there are two options here:

One, officials finally managed to get, say, some top-level Jamaicans or Kenyans. That would be a “powerful strike.”

Two, and more likely, if this cast of 31 was a Kevin Spacey movie, it would be the usual suspects. There are roughly 10,000 athletes at a Summer Games. Catching 31 means roughly 0.3 percent. Whoo.

Let’s be clear:

In this moment, the IOC is facing a potentially unprecedented onslaught of challenges: everything from Russian doping to the seemingly chaotic preparations for the Rio Games, from allegations of potential bribery involving Tokyo’s win for 2020 to the sudden resignation of Yang Ho Cho, the one guy in South Korea who had the 2018 Winter Games ship — finally — moving in the right direction.

IOC leadership has a bully pulpit. But no. It has been notably quiet when it could and should be aggressive in pursuit of resolution to all these challenges.

But that does not mean it is up to the United States to decide unilaterally that it is an American burden, taken on willingly, to address or fix even one of these problems.

The notion of American exceptionalism — that we are different because we are us — plays well domestically.

Internationally, not so much. Indeed, in the Olympic scene, you hear time and again that the rest of the world wants way, way less American exceptionalism. To that point, senior U.S. Olympic Committee leadership has spent the past six years preaching humility, asserting that the U.S. is just one of more than 200 nations in a global movement.

Apparently that message didn’t reach Brooklyn.

In retrospect, maybe it all makes so much more sense now, the failure of that New York bid for the Summer 2012 Games. All this dropping dead.

An American civics refresher: there are 94 U.S. attorney’s offices, one for each federal district. Federal prosecutors make for one of the most powerful arms of the entire United States government.

In Brooklyn, they implausibly decided the course of action ought to be more American exceptionalism.

Like, way more. Take that, everyone. Enjoy our investigation along with your freedom fries and newly relabeled “America” beer (née Budweiser).

A little more American civics background: the planning and execution of an American bid for a mega-event such as the Games or the World Cup involves different entities that are all part of the same branch of government, the executive: the FBI and DOJ, State, Treasury and more.

The head of the executive branch is the president himself.

President Obama has been, in many regards, an extraordinary executive. If the time in which we live is not always kind to Mr. Obama, history likely will be. At the same time, he might be the worst sports president since 1776. Ever since the day in October 2009 that Chicago got the boot for the 2016 Summer Games, won by Rio, the Obama Administration’s connection with international sports has been rich with one conflict after another.

And particularly with Russia.

It was just two-plus years ago, for instance, that the president opted in advance of the Sochi Games to make a political statement regarding Russia’s anti-gay laws by naming a U.S. delegation that was to be headed by the tennis star Billie Jean King and two other openly gay athletes. (King ultimately made it to the closing ceremony; she was unable to attend the opening ceremony because of her mother’s death.)

In nearly three years as IOC president, Bach has met with more than 100 heads of state. Obama? No, and not even last October, when a good chunk of the Olympic movement’s senior leadership descended on Washington, D.C., for the meeting of the Assn. of National Olympic Committees.

At that ANOC meeting, not one ranking Obama Administration official showed up — until the fourth day. Then came a surprise appearance from Vice President Joe Biden, the protocol equivalent of a drive-by.

During his brief stay on stage, all of seven minutes, the vice president called the Olympics the “single unifying principle in the world.”

Pretty hard to mesh that with an investigation out of Brooklyn into Russian dopers.

Indeed, there’s so much wrong with the idea that American federal prosecutors are investigating the possibility of laying criminal charges in this kind of matter that it is difficult to even know where to begin.

But here we go:

— There’s no law on point.

— On what theory does the United States claim virtually unlimited, worldwide jurisdiction?

It is incredibly unclear what nexus the United States might assert here to find jurisdiction. The banking system, as in the FIFA matter? That has always been tenuous.

— Let’s play hypothetical for just a moment. Assume the case yields indictments. How in the world are you going to get defendants into the United States, particularly if they’re in Russia? Get serious.

— The Times reported that the whistleblower in another story it broke a few days ago, about alleged misconduct at the Sochi 2014 lab, the director Dr. Grigory Rodchenkov, is “among the people under scrutiny by the United States government.”

Let’s see: we want to encourage whistle-blowers to step up and report what they know. Rodchenkov, fleeing to the United States, does just that — only to become a focus of potential criminal inquiry by the feds?

It’s not hard to imagine this hypothetical: Rodchenkov applies for asylum. Such an application hinges on his “cooperation” with the DOJ, the feds in Brooklyn perhaps eager to squeeze him to be a key witness against others.

Rodchenkov already has a lawyer, the Times reported. And he said, “I have no choice. I am between two flames,” meaning the United States and Russian governments.

Also, this: Rodchenkov is living in Los Angeles. That is a long way from Brooklyn.

— Every case brought by federal prosecutors operates on two tracks: it plays out in court and, as well, in the court of public opinion. The resource of the FBI, DOJ and each U.S. Attorney is indeed significant but even that resource is finite. That means each and every prosecution has to be brought to prove a point. In essence, every single prosecution is distinguished, at some level, by notions of politics. This may not be the most popular point of view but it is indisputably true.

The Brooklyn office is the same office that is central to the FIFA case. That matter is a reach, jurisdictionally and otherwise.

This? Way more so.

And yet this is what law enforcement chooses to investigate? When surely the Eastern District of New York has more pressing issues? Like, say, shootings? Racially tinged housing issues? Antitrust matters? The list could go on and on.

— Why do U.S. taxpayers care for even a second if Russians are doping? What taxpayer interest might prosecutors be serving or protecting by going after sports dopers? None. Obviously. Otherwise Congress would have enacted a law saying something about the matter. That’s the way the American system works.

— Further:

Let’s say an American finished one position lower in x number of sports at the Games because of proven Russian doping. Would the outcome of a criminal case result in y number more medals for the United States? Or Italy? France? Mongolia? Wherever?

Take as just one of but many such examples the Olympic women’s 20-kilometer walk.

Olga Kaniskina of Russia won the event in Beijing in 2008 and crossed the line second in London in 2012. In March of this year, the Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled Kaniskina ineligible from August 2009 until October 2012 because of anomalies in what’s called her “biological passport,” a reading of blood markers. Thus at issue: the London silver. Third place? Qieyang Shenjie of China. Fourth? Liu Hong, China. The top American finisher? Maria Michta, 29th.

The women’s 3k steeplechase from London? The first-place finisher, Yulia Zaripova of Russia, is expected to be DQ’d for doping. Second? Habib Ghribi of Tunisia. Third? Sofia Assefa, Ethiopia. Fourth? Micah Chemos Cheywa of Kenya. The top American? Emma Coburn, ninth.

London women’s discus: Russian silver medalist Darya Pishchalnikova tests positive for a steroid. Third place? Li Yanfeng of China. Fourth? Yarelys Barrios of Cuba. The best American? Stephanie Brown Trafton, the 2008 gold medalist, in eighth.

And so on.

— Is it the DOJ’s responsibility to protect Americans from watching bad sports? Hardly.

Joke: if so, maybe it should focus on the MLS.

— The DOJ has a proven record of achieving very little, if anything, after spending considerable taxpayer dollars when it comes to high-profile sports-related corruption or doping-related prosecutions.

The two figures at the center of Salt Lake City’s tainted bid for the 2002 Winter Games, Tom Welch and Dave Johnson? The case — 15 counts against each — was dropped, a federal judge saying it offended his “sense of justice,” adding, “Enough is enough.”

Roger Clemens? Acquitted of charges he obstructed and lied to Congress in denying he used performance-enhancing drugs.

Barry Bonds? Free as a big-headed bird after nearly 10 years of facing prosecution.

Then there’s the peculiar matter involving Lance Armstrong. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles spent nearly two years investigating allegations that Armstrong and his cycling teammates committed a variety of potential crimes via doping. A grand jury had even been convened. Then, in February 2012, the case mysteriously just — stopped. Over and done. No more.

For years, Armstrong denied doping. He said at the time the criminal case was dropped that he was “gratified,” adding, “It is the right decision and I commend them for reaching it.”

So strange, still. Eight months later, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency released more than 1,000 pages of evidence against Armstrong. Three months after that, there was Armstrong with Oprah Winfrey, purportedly confessing all.

The addendum: the chief prosecutor of the LA office at the time, then-U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr., was confirmed in July 2014 as a federal judge. That's a lifetime job.

For those keeping score: the former chief prosecutor in the Brooklyn office, Loretta Lynch, is now attorney general of the United States.

Remember: politics attends virtually everything involving the U.S. attorney’s office, wherever, wherever and however.

— Finally, when did it become a key DOJ agenda item to make U.S. foreign policy?

The idea that federal prosecutors could be so narrow-minded as to not take into account the LA24 bid, or American soccer ambitions for 2026, seems like a classic case of one executive branch hand (prosecutors) not knowing what the waggling fingers on the other hand might be up to.

Or, more probably, not caring.

Simply put: this is likely to pose a huge challenge for the USOC, the LA24 committee and others in the sports movement.

The FIFA thing was already difficult enough to try to explain amid the complicated matrix that underpins any U.S. sports bid.

Beyond which, any number of IOC members are known post-9/11 to be wary of travel to the United States. No one from another country likes being treated like a potential terrorist upon arrival. Especially IOC members.

Any number of members are also cautious, if not more, when it comes to what they perceive as a Wild West-type American gun culture. Among their questions: is it really safe to go to a college campus when there are open-carry laws? What about an Olympics with so many people carrying so many guns?

Now this from Brooklyn, and what is sure to be the follow-on assertion by any number of members that they must fret about every credit-card receipt if any financial transaction credibly can provide a tie to the U.S. legal system.

If the easy answer to that is, hey, IOC members, don’t do anything wrong — sure.

The simple rejoinder: it’s the cities that have proven the much-larger problem in IOC bidding, not the members per se.

At any rate, that doesn’t answer the salient question, which is: in September, 2017, with Paris, Rome and Budapest in the field along with Los Angeles, which city is going to get a majority of IOC votes?

As a policy matter, securing an Olympic Games is a way better proposition than going after some Russians. Politically, economically, culturally and in virtually every other way: winning a Games is a better bet.

At one point, you know, even President Obama thought so. He put his prestige on the line for Chicago, his hometown. Nothing has been quite the same since.

Red, white and maybe feeling blue?

BEIJING — Coming into these 2015 track and field world championships, it looked for — and to —  all the world like this could be the meet when the American team finally reached that elusive 30-total medal count.

With the meet now at its (just-past) halfway point, that looks exceedingly unlikely. The question now is more fundamental: is this 2015 performance a blip or a precursor for next year’s Rio 2016 Summer Games and, indeed, beyond?

Coming into Wednesday, four nights into the nine-day meet, the United States had exactly as many golds as Canada: one.

The American Joe Kovacs won the men’s shot put; the Canadian Shawn Barber, the men’s pole vault.

After Wednesday, the United States still had -- one. 

The Brits? Three. The Americans' new political friends in Cuba? Two.

Overall, Kenya led the medal count, with 11, six gold; the Americans were next, with nine (that one gold, three silver, five bronze).

Kenya is not just marathoners anymore. Julius Yego won the men's javelin Wednesday night with the farthest throw in 14 years, 92.72 meters, or 304 feet, 2 inches.

Meanwhile, the IAAF announced earlier in the evening that two Kenyans, Francisca Koki and Joyce Zakari, had tested positive after providing samples on August 20 and 21, respectively — that is, immediately before the meet started. These “targeted tests were conducted by the IAAF at the athlete hotels,” the federation said in a statement. No other details were immediately available.

The run-up to the 2015 championships has been marked by waves of media reports alleging doping positives and cover-ups in the Kenyan track and field scene.

Zakari had run second in her 400 heat in 50.71, then proved a no-show for the first of Tuesday’s three semifinals.

Koki, in the 400 hurdles, ran 58.96 in her opening round, second-slowest in the entire field.

For the U.S. to prevail in the medals count next year at Rio, as it did in London 2012, with 103, China next at 88, the weight rests on its track and swim teams.

In London, the swim team won 30 medals at the pool, 31 including Haley Anderson’s silver in the open-water competition. The track team: 29.

A few weeks ago at the 2015 world swim championships in Kazan, Russia, the U.S. team ended up with 23 medals, eight gold. That’s arguably misleading, though, because two of those medals came in the mixed relays, which would be new Olympic events. So: 21.

Of course, Michael Phelps did not swim in Kazan and threw down three world-best performances that same week at the U.S. nationals. Even so, it was arguably the American team’s poorest performance at a worlds dating to 1973; in 1994, the Americans went home from Rome with 21 medals, four gold.

For the track team, expectations had soared before this meet in Beijing, the U.S. sending arguably its deepest team ever.

To be sure, the Americans have had some successes. In the women’s 10,000 meters, for example, U.S. runners went 3-4-6, Emily Infeld passing Molly Huddle at the line for the bronze, Shalane Flanagan taking sixth.

Shamier Little, with a bright green bow in her hair, and Cassandra Tate went 2-3 Wednesday night in the women's 400 hurdles. Zuzana Hejnova of the Czech Republic, the Moscow 2013 champion who had spent most of 2014 recovering from a broken bone in her left foot, dominated again in a 2015 world best 53.50. Little ran 53.94, Tate 54.02.

The final events Wednesday night, however, proved hugely emblematic of American performance:

Only one American, Justin Gatlin, had even made it through the heats to the semifinals of the men’s 200. He ran an easy 19.87 to move on to the finals, that 19.87 the second-fastest semifinal time ever at a worlds; Francis Obikwelu ran 19.84 in 1999.

Justin Gatlin's 19.87 in the men's 200m semi tonight was the second-fastest semifinal time ever at the World Championships. The fastest: Nigeria's Francis Obikwelu's 19.84, in 1999.

In the next heat, Usain Bolt, who defeated Gatlin in the 100 Sunday night by one-hundredth of a second, ran a season-best 19.95, chatting with South Africa's Anaso Jobodwana in the next lane, second in 20.01, as they crossed the line. 

In the women's pole vault, American Jenn Suhr, the 2012 Olympic champion, afforded a huge opportunity because Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva was not jumping (the all-time pole vault diva gave birth last June to a daughter), managed a tie for fourth, at 4.70 meters, or 15 feet, 5 inches -- along with another American, Sandi Morris, a rising college star, and Sweden's Angelica Bengtsson.

Cuba's Yarisley Silva won, with 4.90, or 16-0 3/4. Brazil's Fabiana Murer took second, at 4.85, 15-11. Greece's Nikoleta Kyriakopoulo got third, at 4.80, 15-9.

Silva made three attempts at 5.01, 16-5, but did not clear. Isinbayeva holds the world record, 5.06, 16-7, set six years ago.

Emma Coburn had been a medal hope in the women's 3000 steeplechase. She finished fifth, in 9:21.78. Hyvin Kiyeng Jepkemoi of -- where else? -- Kenya took gold, in 9:19.11. Habiba Shribi of Tunisia came second, 13-hundredths back, Gesa Felicitas Krause of Germany in a personal-best 9:19.25, 14-hundredths behind.

The men's 400 proved super-crazy fast.

The American LaShawn Merritt, the Moscow 2013 and Beijing 2008 Olympic champion, in Lane 8, went out hard early on the way to personal-best 43.65. He got second.

South Africa's Wayde Van Niekerk ran 43.48, unequivocally the fastest time of 2015. Kirani James of Grenada got third, in a season-best 43.78, Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic fourth in a national-record 44.11.

Van Niekerk's best before Wednesday had been more than a half-second slower, 43.96. His 43.48 makes him the fourth-fastest man ever at the distance: Michael Johnson (43.18), Butch Reynolds, Jeremy Wariner.

The second-, third- and fourth-place finishes? The fastest times for those positions ever at a worlds.

Van Niekerk was taken off the track in a stretcher. His condition was not immediately available.

Merritt's silver tied him with Carl Lewis as the most successful American man in worlds history, with 10 medals. He has five 4x400 relay medals (all gold, dating to 2005) and five in the open 400 (two gold, three silver).

Watch out going forward, meantime, for Isaac Makwala of Botswana, fifth in 44.63.

Makwala had shown up big-time in the semifinals, with the field’s top time, 44.11, and from the outside lane. With an electric-green sleeve on his right arm, he dropped after the finish line and gave the crowd five push-ups, a signal that the semis amounted to nothing more than a training run.

For literally decades, the 400 has been an American stronghold, dominated by the likes of Johnson, Reynolds, Wariner and Merritt. Indeed, aside from 2011 and 2001, an American athlete had won the 400 at every worlds dating to 1991.

Merritt took second in 2011 when James announced his arrival on the world stage; Merritt was coming back that year from a doping ban, and he and James have since traded off titles, James winning in London in 2012, Merritt in Moscow in 2013.

Any discussion of what this all means, if anything, must start with the acknowledgement that the rest of the world has gotten way better at events that Americans used to regularly be able to count on for production in the medals count.

To take another beyond the men’s 400, consider the men’s 400 hurdles:

Helsinki 2005, for instance: two medals, gold and silver. Osaka 2007: one, gold. Berlin 2009, one, gold.

Daegu 2011: zero, with Britain, Puerto Rico and South Africa 1-2-3, the best Americans sixth and seventh.

Moscow 2013: one, a silver, Jehue Gordon of Trinidad & Tobago winning, Emir Bekric of Serbia taking third.

Beijing 2015: Kenya-Russia-Bahamas went 1-2-3.

The Americans finished fourth (Kerron Clement, the 2007 and 2009 world champion who had spent 2014 battling injuries) and eighth (Michael Tinsley, the 2012 Olympic and 2013 worlds silver medalist, in 50.02, after crashing through the eighth hurdle).

Two Americans had put down the year’s best time before this meet, Bershawn Jackson, 48.09, and Johnny Dutch, 48.13. Neither made it to the final.

For emphasis: Kenya had won 45 gold medals at the worlds, dating to 1983, but none before Tuesday night had come in an event shorter than 800 meters.

Tuesday night’s winner: Kenya's Nicholas Bett, in a national record and 2015 world-leading time, 47.79. From Lane 9, again far on the outside.

“I am happy to win this first 400-meter hurdles medal ever for Kenya,” Bett said afterward. “I am thankful.”

Russia’s Denis Kudryavtsev, in 48.05, took one-hundredth off a national record that had stood for 17 years.

Jeffrey Gibson of the Bahamas ran a national record 48.17. That broke his own record, 48.37, which he had run in the semifinals.

“I am looking forward to more races and more training for the Olympic season,” he said afterward.

It must be acknowledged, as the New York Times pointed out in a story after Tuesday's finals, that U.S. coaches are playing a significant role in the success of other nations, and in events, such as the long jump, where memories of American success — Carl Lewis, Mike Powell, Dwight Phillips — run long.

In Tuesday night’s long jump final, the gold (Britain’s Greg Rutherford) and silver (Australian Fabrice Lapierre) medals went to athletes who train near Phoenix with the American Dan Pfaff; the bronze, China’s first long jump medal at a worlds, went to Wang Jianan, who trains with the American Randy Huntington.

The top American? Jeff Henderson, the 2015 Pan Am Games champion, ninth, one spot out of the finals.

Barber, the Canadian pole vault winner? He goes to college at the University of Akron.

As in any meet, injuries always play a role. The American 200-meter specialist Wallace Spearmon, for instance, scratched out of Tuesday’s heats upon reporting a small tear in his left calf muscle.

Beyond all that, it’s track and field, and stuff happens. Alysia Montaño, one of the best American racers in the women’s 800, in contention for a top-three finish in Wednesday’s heats, fell on the second lap after a tangle. She ended up getting disqualified.

In Tuesday night’s women’s 1500, Jenny Simpson, the Daegu 2011 gold and Moscow 2013 silver medalist, lost a shoe. She finished 11th. Ethiopia’s Genzebe Dibaba, one of the sport’s brightest new stars, won in 4:08.09.

Hopes were high in the men’s steeplechase Monday night that, for the first time ever at a world championship, the Americans — specifically, Evan Jager — might win a medal. Jager led at the bell lap but finished sixth. The Kenyans went 1-2-3-4.

How, meanwhile, to explain the men’s triple jump?

Two Americans, Marquis Dendy and Will Claye, could not summon enough Wednesday morning to make the final.

Coming in, Dendy had the year’s fourth-best jump, Claye the fifth; Claye, moreover, is an incredibly versatile athlete who at the 2012 London Games became the first man since 1936 to win medals in both the long jump (silver) and the triple jump (bronze).

Wendy, afterward: “I can’t be too, too mad, but I am disappointed.”

Claye: “I’m still in shock. I don’t even know what happened. It just wasn’t my day. That’s the only way I can see it. I went out there and gave it my all. It just wasn’t my day. I have to make my rules and get ready for next season.”