Like life itself, no one owes you anything

Welcome to 2017. My friend of many years, Gianni Merlo, the Italian president of the international sportswriters association, keeps telling me to write shorter. In that spirit, here are 12 three-sentence nuggets (OK, some of them are long sentences):  

1. The 2016 and 2012 Olympic decathlete champion Ashton Eaton and his wife, Brianne Theisen-Eaton, the Rio heptathlon bronze medalist, announce their retirement. Great athletes, better people and congrats to them and their world-class coach and first-rate human being himself, Harry Marra. The hug Ashton and Brianne shared after she won the pentathlon at the 2016 IAAF world indoors in Portland, Oregon, is the moment of the year in the sport, if not the entire Olympic scene.

2. Nick Symmonds, the U.S. 800-meter runner, announces he’s going to retire, too, and the likes of my longtime colleague Tim Layden of Sports Illustrated assert Symmonds’ activism will be missd in a sport that “has been ruled by bureaucrats and shoe companies that have successfully suppressed athletes’ earning power and voices,” Tim adding that Nick has been “the most willing to place his career and earnings at risk.” That’s one point of view, along with Tim’s assertion that Nick, sponsored by Brooks, was “excluded” from the 2015 Beijing worlds team amid a dispute over when and where to wear Nike gear. The truth: Nick opted out because he refused to sign and it’s far from clear how far, age 31 that summer, he would have made it in the 800 rounds at the Beijing championships.

3. Symmonds is a relentless self-promoter and provocateur who has failed significantly at the core notion some percentage of those who cover track and field for some bizarre reason seemingly keep wishing (or at least suggesting) he is something of a success at: getting other national-team athletes to go along with his act or significantly and constructively influencing corporate or federation policy. Tim writes, “There is not another Symmonds on the horizon, and that is an enormous loss.” Hmm — maybe if more people thought Nick had a point worth pursuing, there would be lots and lots more Nicks on the way, the 2004 Athens shot put champion Adam Nelson telling the New York Times, “It would have been great if he had found more ways to involve more athletes.”

4. In 2014, when he switched from Nike to Brooks, Nick wrote this in a piece that was published in Runner’s World: “In the past few years I have been very vocal about athletes’ rights, and Brooks’ support of professional runners for the health of competitive running is squarely in line with what I have been advocating.” Fascinating — tell that to Jeremy Taiwo, the U.S. decathlete. In March 2016, Brooks announced it had signed Taiwo to a deal, declaring Taiwo was part of the company’s “Inspire Daily” program, a “group of athletes and coaches around the country who lead by example and inspire the love of running every time they lace up and head out”; after the U.S. Trials in July in Eugene, the company hailed “Brooks Beast Jeremy Taiwo” for his second-place finish, behind Eaton, saying, “Brooks sponsors athletes like Taiwo to inspire runners everywhere, and supporting them on and off the run is central to that goal"; in Rio, Taiwo finished 11th; a few days ago, Brooks acknowledged it had dropped its sponsorship of Taiwo, declaring it was a “running-only company.”

5. Here is the unvarnished truth about the economics of track and field (and by extension the Olympic movement) in the United States, as popular or not as it may be: like life itself, no one is owed anything. The athletes are independent contractors, there is no union, no collective bargaining agreement, no teams, no league. Indeed, track and field is the essence of what most Americans say since kindergarten is what they believe in: self-determination, becoming what you dream you want to be, in short the ability to make money off your own talent, skill and enterprise.

6. Track and field’s world governing body, the IAAF, says the new “Nitro Athletics” meet next month in Australia, featuring “Usain Bolt’s All-Stars” and other teams, is destined to be “the innovation [track and field] needs.” For sure the presentation of track and field needs innovation. Not clear if a Team Tennis-style format is going to be it.

7. The gymnast Simone Biles is fabulous. But how did the swimmer Katie Ledecky not win every U.S. female athlete of the year award for 2016? She won the 800-meter freestyle in Rio by 11 seconds!

8. The European Olympic Committees is due to make a decision soon on whether to keep next month’s Winter European Youth Olympic Festival (that’s the name) in Erzurum, Turkey. The concern, obviously, is the security situation in Turkey, which really makes it not a difficult decision. If you were a parent — under what theory would you permit your kid to go?

9. Ban Ki Moon steps down as UN Secretary General. He and the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, are close. Is Ban the next president of scandal-wracked South Korea, and just in time for the Pyeongchang 2018 Winter Games?

10. A U.S. intelligence assessment says Russian president Vladimir Putin sought to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, asserting one of the motives was payback for, among other things, allegations of widespread Russian athlete doping, the report asserting that from a Russian perspective the doping scandal and Panama Papers were seen as “U.S.-directed efforts to defame Russia.” This is the best intelligence the U.S. can produce? Maybe this is why President-elect Trump has been publicly so unimpressed: pretty much everything in that report has been public knowledge for weeks.

11. Thousands of words in that report, yet not even one about President Obama’s politically driven move to very publicly stick it to the Russians on the occasion of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, nominating to the formal U.S. delegation a number of gay athletes amid the furor over the Russian anti-gay legislation? That is a material omission. Who are the geniuses, exactly, working for these “intelligence” agencies?

12. Here’s what, if you are American, you really ought to be upset about, and it’s not Russia and Putin, because you have to assume hacking is, and has been for years, a fact of life, and it goes both ways. Getting all sanctimonious over a Russian “influence” campaign, meanwhile, willfully ignores the many times the U.S. government has sought to “influence” affairs in other nations. Here’s the dilemma: are the Russians really that much better at cyber stuff than the Americans?

Simply, all around, the best

RIO de JANEIRO — Ashton Eaton is, again, the world's greatest all-around athlete.

And so, so much more.

To fully appreciate the gold medal that Ashton won Thursday night after 10 events in the decathlon means to wholly appreciate as well the bronze medal that his wife, Brianne Theisen-Eaton, who competes for Canada, won last Saturday in the heptathlon.

Ashton and Brianne are husband and wife. And way more.

They are a team. One’s success is the other’s.

To read the rest of this column, please click through to NBCOlympics: http://bit.ly/2b2ZP6v

A 4th of July story: Ashton Eaton, the anti-Trump

EUGENE — On this Fourth of July, when we celebrate America and Americans, here’s to a celebration of the U.S. decathlon champion, Ashton Eaton. Not to put too fine a tag on it but: Ashton Eaton is the anti-Donald Trump.

The very last thing Ashton Eaton would have done after winning — again — the decathlon here at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials would have been to proclaim, “I’m going to Rio and my point total is going to be huuuuuge!”

Nor did he say, “I have very big hands.”

As if.

Trump, as this year’s presidential politics has proven, is divisive, bigoted, obnoxious, loud and polarizing.

Eaton’s greatness, the position he has earned on the public stage, has come without him bragging about how great he is. His actions speak volumes. But when he does talk, he does so with intellect, eloquence, humor and, most important, humility.

Moreover, Ashton Eaton isn’t building a wall. He’s building bridges.

Eaton represents the emergence of the multicultural America that Trump, in particular, finds so threatening. Ashton grew up in central Oregon; his father is black, his mother white. As a single mother, Roz Eaton worked several jobs to see after her son, at a law office by day and waitressing at night.

Ashton, 28, and his wife, the Canadian multi-event talent, Brianne Theisen-Eaton, 27, are the model young couple ever mom and dad would like to see their kids grow up to be.

An Eaton story: Ashton and Brianne could drive anything. They drive a white Hyundai Elantra. It gets the job done. There’s no need for more.

The Eatons come by this honestly. It’s not just them. Their coach, Harry Marra, who is one of the most genuine people you might find not just in sports but in any endeavor, drives a 25-year-old white Mazda Miata. “It still looks good, man,” Marra said, laughing.

“It’s a simple statement and I know I have said it a million times,”  Marra said, and referring specifically to Eaton, “Everybody knows he’s a great athlete. But he’s a better human being.”

Another Eaton story: at the Olympics, they stay not in a five-star hotel but in the Olympic Village, he with the Americans, she the Canadians. In London four years ago, he brought her dinner and vice-versa.

Ashton Eaton is the London 2012 decathlon gold medalist. He is the world record-holder in the decathlon, the 10-event discipline that for generations has come to define the world’s best all-around athlete.

In 2012, here at venerable Hayward Field at the 2012 U.S. Trials, Eaton set what was then a decathlon points world record: 9,039.

Last August, at the world championships in Beijing, he upped that to 9,045. He ran the 400 meters in 45 seconds flat.

To give you an idea of how good that is: LaShawn Merritt on Sunday won the open 400 in 43.97.

To further emphasize how good 45-flat that is: Bill Toomey had run the prior fastest decathlon 400: 45.68, in the 1968 Mexico City Olympics. Bill Toomey!

Eaton, according to the authoritative track and field website Tilastopaja, has the 271st best performance in history in the 400; 147th in the 400-meter hurdles (48.69, in 2014); 191st in the long jump (8.23 meters, or 27 feet, 2012); and 152nd in the 110-meter hurdles (13.35, 2011).

To further amplify Eaton’s excellence in the all-around events, he is the Moscow 2013 world championship gold medalist (8,809 points); the Daegu 2011 world silver medalist; and a three-time world indoor gold medalist in the seven-event heptathlon, 6,470 points in Portland this past March, 6,632 in Sopot, Poland, in 2014 and a world-record 6,645 points in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2012.

It was in Portland that the Eatons, husband and wife, provided one of the sport’s indelible images. After Brianne clinched the pentathlon, Ashton, in his warm-ups amid the long jump competition, bolted onto the track to embrace his wife.

For all that he has accomplished, Eaton’s performance over two days in 2016 at Hayward may have been his best ever.

He was not only hurt. He was hurting.

Coming in, he had a quadriceps problem in his left leg. Then the right hamstring started acting up.

The second-day discuss throw — he fouled on his first attempt, threw just 122 feet on No. 2, which was good for 15th, then moved up to 10th on the third throw with a 135-9.

After that, he went second in the pole vault, fourth in the javelin and wrapped it all up with a fourth-place 4:25.15 in the 1500.

Total: 8750 points.

If 8750 wasn’t a world record, well — none of the decathletes heading to Rio, none of them from anywhere in the world, has a personal best that matches what Eaton did here over the weekend.

Jeremy Taiwo took second with 8425, Zach Ziemek third with 8413.

The nature of track and field — with the potential for injury and collision — is that anything can happen, anytime. That was never more evident than on Monday, when two of the favorites in the women’s 800, Brenda Martinez and Alysia Montaño, collided with about 150 meters to go, at roughly 1:36 in the race, Martinez staggering to seventh in 2:06.63, Montaño limping in to eighth about a minute later after picking herself, 3:06.77. At the finish line, she dropped to her knees in tears.

Kate Grace won, in 1:59.1; Ajee’ Wilson got second, 1:59.51; Chrishuna Williams third, 1:59.59.

https://twitter.com/NBCOlympics/status/750130824977100801

“Anything can happen,” Montaño would say later.

She also said of picking herself up off the track with about 150 meters to go, the others far ahead, “You get up and you’re, like, really far away, and your heart breaks.”

Ashton Eaton has been a model of consistency in a discipline in which consistency is everything.

After so many competitions, he said at Sunday’s post-event news conference, “Mentally, I think what happens when you get older is you have more experience,” adding, “If I’m in a situation in a decathlon, I have confidence I can handle it.”

That was the answer to the first question.

The second had to do with competing while injured.

Then, and this is testament to the kind of person Ashton Eaton is, he said, “I’m not answering any more until these guys get some questions.”

The ladies and gentlemen of the press dutifully asked some questions of Taiwo, who is incredibly thoughtful, and Ziemek, who is super-tough, having done another decathlon at the NCAAs just weeks ago.

“As soon as I crossed the line,” meaning at the final 1500, Taiwo said, “I remembered all those times: this is the hardest journey you’ve ever had. This is a deciding moment in your life, at 26. You know, you’ve had to beg, you’ve had to do this, you’ve wanted to give you, you’ve wanted to not go to practice — just go work at Whole Foods or something, because this hurts.

“Being a decathlete all year round — what are you doing? How are you going to pay for this? Just all that in my mind — I was so grateful.”

When the questioning turned back to Eaton, he was asked about the two charities — Right to Play and World Vision — to which he and his wife donate their time.

“For us, as a young couple to be put in a situation where you get to help someone — that’s pretty powerful stuff.

“The first experience these organizations gave us, what kind of I guess power we have in that area, was pretty emotional. So we feel really strongly about those organizations and organizations in general.”

He paused, choosing his words carefully: “As athletes, you really see a lot of — the Instagram paradigm, where it’s just, ‘Me, me, me, me, me.’ But when you realize [the alternative]: ‘Give, give, give, give’ — it’s very interesting.” Here, he worked hard to control his emotion: “It’s good.”

Eaton was asked, too, the obvious question: what can be done to get the decathlon back to the immensely popular event it once was?

“I think the question to ask is why was it so popular before and what happened to make it fade?

“But — I have noticed things in general tend to follow, like, an up-and-down trend. Perhaps in four years you’ll see decathlon being popular for some unknown reason. And for some unknown reason it started becoming unpopular a while ago.

“I’m not sure what to do to make in order to make it more popular. I think the media tend to have a lot of say in what gets promoted or not. So maybe if you guys — I don’t know. I don’t want to say anything right now but I feel like we train really hard to perform really well. We set ourselves to really high standards. Athletes are always set to super-high standards. What standards are the media setting for themselves? What is it like when you guys compete? Or do you compete at all? It’s an interesting question, a great question.”

The murmur from the assembled press: my friend, have you seen the economic upheaval in our business?

Eaton laughed: “You’re broke, too. So there it is.”

One final Eaton story.

Not content on Sunday with having to answer or forward questions, he decided to play guest moderator, too — another way to direct the spotlight onto the others who, it should be emphasized, had just made the Olympic team, too.

Turning to Taiwo and Ziemek next to him, Eaton asked, “Did you know, like in your mind, did you have the possibility that I could possibly do this? And is there any way you can articulate a possibility becoming a reality?”

Here is the mark of a truly great champion. He brings out the best in those around him.

“To be able to do it,” Ziemek said, “shows how much work I was able to put in and, I mean, doing a decathlon is so great because anything can happen.”

“I think that last statement that Zach made is one that stays in your mind,” Taiwo said. “In a decathlon, anything can happen. After the first day, I felt like, hey, this is going really well. But I still have five more events tomorrow. So I can’t get ahead of myself.

“There are ups and downs. And everybody knows Dan O’Briens’s story for trying to make the 1992 team, in Barcelona. You can be the best athlete in the world, and set the world record later but if you don’t perform at these Trials, the American Trials — these people are the best athletes in the world.”

O’Brien famously failed at the 1992 Trials to clear the bar on all three of his attempts at the pole vault; he didn’t make the team. He would come back to win Olympic decathlon gold at the Atlanta 1996 Games.

“You’ve got to be on it,” Taiwo said. “That now becoming a reality — it just makes every second that you questioned the journey, every second that you questioned if you are too tired or making excuses for yourself, you know it really just blows that all away.

“It makes you say, ‘Hey, I did everything right.’ “

Portland 2016: a track and field innovation lab

PORTLAND, Ore. — For as long as anyone might remember, the mantra in track and field has been: well, that’s the way it has always been done. The 2016 world indoor championships, which concluded Sunday after a four-day stand at the Oregon Convention Center, offered a different take. Here, it was: let’s try something new.

“Innovation,” Max Siegel, the chief executive officer of USA Track & Field, “doesn’t happen by accident.”

It’s a function, he emphasized, of collaboration and resource: “You have to have a deliberate plan. You have to plan to be innovative, and then when you come up with an innovative idea you have to have an effective plan to execute the idea.”

The track was green. With the house lights down, the athletes entered down a ramp as their names were called out, one by one. The medals were, for the most part, awarded not onsite but at a downtown square that had been turned into a live-music and party venue. During the championships, a (mostly rock) soundtrack kept the beat to what was what on the track and in the field (special shout-out to the excellent DJ who threw Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” out there during the men’s masters’ 800).

Did it all work? For sure not. A meet session should be two to two-and-a-half hours, max. Too often it went three-plus.

Did enough of it work, however, so that there’s reason, for the first time in a long time, to think that track and field at least stands a chance — again, a chance — of breaking out of its bubble and emerging over the next few years, particularly in the United States, as more than a niche sport?

For sure.

Even the highlight moment of the championships — Ashton Eaton bounding over in his warmups from the long jump pit to congratulate his wife, Brianne Theisen-Eaton, for winning the pentathlon — was, though thoroughly unscripted, at least allowed for.

Organizers timed it so that husband and wife would be on track at the same time.

“When you know you have these possibilities,” said Paul Hardy, competition director for track’s worldwide governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, “you start thinking about creating a timetable that allows for these special moments.”

He added a moment later, “That’s how we’re now looking at it — how we present the sport.”

He also said, “We need to introduce things. Hopefully they’ll work. If you don’t try anything, you never know if it works. If it doesn’t, you can try for the next time. if it does, hopefully we can improve it even more.”

Even friendly police

The vibe was so overwhelmingly positive in Portland that even the police proved smiling, friendly, accessible.

That, too, was by design.

“Community engagement,” as police nationwide like to call it, is “a huge priority for us right now,” Portland police Sgt. Greg Stewart, the department’s acting spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

“Nationally with the police — it really is a contentious time. Police and community relations are maybe not what they should be. The chief,” Larry O’Dea the city’s police chief for the past 16 months, “is really working to make sure that’s a focus for us.”

When the police are cool, anything’s possible. Even in track and field, right?

Some is just easy: the kiss-cam (or smile-cam, whatever), a staple at other major events? Why not?

But why not think really out of the box?

What about re-configuring the set-up so that, in the same way that fans sit court-side at an NBA game, they can sit immediately along the track?

At the Kentucky Derby, thousands of fans crowd the infield. It’s not because they know the life story of every one of those horses, or could remotely care. Absolutely there would have to be some re-thinking of how that might work in track, since the infield is literally where those field events are competed — but why not turn a track infield into the same kind of party zone?

“No idea is stupid,” Hardy said. “If you don’t get people to throw ideas around, you’re never going to get anywhere. We can take ideas from other sports. We can learn from people who follow the sport. We are definitely open.”

As Vin Lananna, president of TrackTown USA, the local organizers of Portland 2016, said, “You can’t be afraid to think big.”

He observed: “The best example is American football. How many real football fans know everything about football and go to the stadium to watch a football game? A lot of it is social.

“We don’t do it in track. We make it impossible. It’s long. It’s often boring. The announcers don’t relate. There’s no music.

“We’re getting there little by little,” he said of the 2016 world indoors. “This is a good start.”

These championships marked the first world championships with Seb Coe, elected last August, as  IAAF president.

Coe, recognizing that track’s demographics trend older than younger, has preached relentlessly that the sport must innovate — in everything from presentation to social media.

“If you’re going to innovate,” Coe said, “a lot of it is going to work but you have to recognize that some of it is like the Paris fashions — not everything is angular, jagged, outrageous. Some of Paris fashion week is inevitably going to end up on a coat hanger in a retail store. But you do need to start somewhere.

“This for me is absolutely crucial: we must give federations, we must give organizing committees, permission to think out of the box and not sit there thinking, ‘I am going to look silly if it doesn’t come off.’ Because some of it is not going to come off.”

Part Two in a three-piece Oregon trilogy

These 2016 world indoors also made for the second act in a three-part Oregon world championship track and field trilogy keyed by TrackTown, in partnership with, among others, USATF. Understand, for instance, that these indoors don’t happen without the significant financial investment of USATF.

Part one: the 2014 world juniors in Eugene. Part two: Portland 2016. Part three: the 2021 world outdoor championships, back at a rebuilt Hayward Field.

There’s more: the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials will be back at Hayward.

Plus the NCAA Division I track and field championships — they have been at Hayward the past two years, will be there this year (June 8-11), indeed will be there every year through at least 2021.

This summer is due to see the launch of the TrackTown summer series meets.

Little appreciated amid the first world indoor championships in the United States since 1987: the IAAF had to want to come. One of the reasons it did so: the IAAF meetings around the 2014 Eugene world juniors, thanks to the efforts of USATF chief operating officer Renee Washington, were arguably best-ever. A detail that might seem small but really isn’t, like the translation services — it was made a priority, not not an afterthought.

The IAAF noticed.

“There is no one person who can single-handedly take all these people stuck in the fact that [the sport] has been done a single way,” Siegel said, emphasizing, “It takes a collective effort of like-minded people to effect any vision.”

From the get-go, the point of emphasis from all involved was that the 2016 world indoors had to be more than simply a track meet.

The audacious goal was to stage “the best indoor meet ever held anywhere in the world,” Lananna said last Wednesday with the idea of sparking what Coe on Thursday called a “reawakening of track and field in this country.”

That kind of thing is, by definition, going to take time.

So an immediate verdict is, again by definition, all but impossible.

Attendance figures suggest, however, that something must have clicked — the OCC, capacity 7,000, was essentially sold out for all three night events, and even the Friday morning session, competing against an Oregon State NCAA March Madness basketball game on TV, drew 4,087.

On Saturday evening, demand was so intense that organizers added— thank you, Portland fire marshal for being so accommodating — temporary seats and allowed for standing-room only. The total: 7,173.

Sunday, much the same: 7,191. Friendly ticket “brokers” could be seen looking for business outside the convention center.

The four-day attendance total: 39,283.

A huge boost to the atmosphere: the U.S. team ended up with 23 medals overall. Runner-up Ethiopia had -- five. France, four. Nobody else had more than three.

The fundamental challenge

Putting aside doping and corruption issues, for which the sport has justifiably earned headlines in recent months and years, the fundamental challenge is easy to identify: track and field is arguably the only sport in which multiple events are going on simultaneously.

On Sunday, for example: the men’s long jump, women’s 5k and women’s high jump (won a few minutes later by U.S. teen sensation Vashti Cunningham) were all going on at exactly the same time.

How to best present or package that? Production, story-telling, engaging an audience — particularly newbies or casual fans?

At the same time, track and field is without question the most diverse, most global, sport anywhere anytime. It’s also fundamental. Virtually everyone, at some point, has done the run, jump or throw thing.

The 2016 championships drew roughly 500 athletes from more than 140 nations — roughly two-thirds of the countries in the world.

That’s the good.

The not-so: no Usain Bolt, Justin Gatlin, Allyson Felix, Mo Farah (though he did show up to watch), David Rudisha and, of course, given the status of the Russian team amid doping sanction, the pole vault diva Yelena Isinbayeva.

"Feels Like the First Time" -- thanks, Foreigner

The no-shows missed the transformation of the convention center in just 12 days to a world-class track and field venue.

And, beyond the rock soundtrack (Foreigner: “Feels Like the First Time” during the Friday men’s 1500 heats), a series of other major markers, many of which drew from a series of inspirations.

— The pole vault, men’s and women’s, as a by-themselves package on Thursday night, with hundreds of kids allowed onto the banked 200-meter track to watch.

Organizers were rewarded three times over. First: both winners were London 2012 Olympic gold medalists, the American Jenn Suhr and Renaud Lavillenie of France. Second: for the first time ever in the same competition, four women went over 4.80 meters, or 15 feet, 9 inches, Suhr winning in 4.90, 16-0 3/4. Third: Lavillenie, after setting a new indoor championships record on just his third jump, 6.02, 19-9, made three (unsuccessful) tries at a world record, 6.17, 20-2 3/4, electrifying the crowd.

The Lavillenie victory, moreover, provided emphatic evidence that, for all its challenges, track and field remains indisputably at the intersection of real-world politics and sport -- why it's so relevant in so many nations. French president Francois Hollande, on Friday posted to his Twitter account a message that read, in idiomatic English: "Congratulations to Renaud Lavillenie for his second world title! Here's to a great Olympic Games in Rio!"

In the manner of the pole-vault meet that now-IAAF vice president Sergey Bubka used to run in his hometown of Donetsk, Ukraine, stand-alone events would seem a key to the future of track and field.

USATF, for instance, made the hammer-throw at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials a signature event, held — before 5,000 people — at the Nike campus outside Portland. In 2014, the U.S. nationals saw the shot put go down on the California state capitol grounds.

Now: what about featuring that women’s high jump? On, say, the Vegas Strip? Or the Champs Élysées in Paris? Or the riverfront Bund in Shanghai?

— Those athlete entry ramps.

Swimming has long done the athlete intro big-time, with swimmers coming out from behind a partition to lights and music. Track tried that at the World Relays in the Bahamas in 2014, and again last year. Now, the ramps.

Another logistical (and time-saving) advantage: no stripping off the warm-ups in the lanes right before the start of a race.

Coe, noting that the indoor format lends itself more easily to experimentation, said, “Enough [new ideas have] come off here to make a big difference already.”

At the same time, as he noted, and this question about the ramps was rhetorical, not signaling an opinion, “Will that work on a Friday night in London when it’s 48 degrees?”

Norway’s Svein Arne Hansen, president of the European Athletics Assn., emphasizing that he, too, is a big proponent of trying something new, noted with a wry smile about turning down the house lights for athlete introductions: “I cannot turn down the lights at Bislett,” the annual summer stop in Oslo. “It’s sunlight.”

— A digitized scoreboard for the horizontal jumps.

You could see, not just have to imagine, what record a particular jumper might be going for. What a concept.

— Locals operating food trucks as an alternative to arena hot dogs. Voodoo Doughnuts!

— Uber as a sponsor, an example of integrating new, and cost-effective, technology.

Normally, an organizing committee has to find a car sponsor or rent a bunch of cars to create a dedicated carpool system. With Uber — Uber provided the carpool. If you wanted a ride — well, you know how Uber works.

— The make-over of Portland Courthouse Square downtown into the place for medals, music and more.

The nightly medals ceremonies focused on the athletes, a key for Lananna and Coe. Lananna said, “You take youth and connect them to their great heroes. That’s what it’s all about — that next generation.”

A clear logistical benefit to moving the ceremonies offsite: carving time out of the rundown at the track itself.

The offsite medals plaza has many roots — see the Salt Lake City 2002 Winter Games, for instance. Or the party vibe each summer at those Bislett Games in Oslo.

The vibe at the square: Portlandia from the start. At the opening news conference there last Thursday, Coe didn’t wear a tie, the first IAAF event in years at which the president did not wear a tie. Neither did Lananna. Nor Siegel.

Again, all quite deliberately.

“It has been a good event,” Hansen said Sunday as the championships came to a close. “The music. The atmosphere. Excellently organized.”

And, at least for four days, in a nod to the wave of doping and corruption headlines, he said, “We don’t talk about [the bad stuff] anymore.”

Team Eaton: all that is good in track and field

PORTLAND, Ore. — Ashton Eaton and Brianne Theisen-Eaton are the best thing going in track and field. He won the heptathlon Saturday at the 2016 world indoor championships. She won the pentathlon the day before, her first world title. It’s not just that they win. It’s how they win. With grace. Dignity. Sportsmanship. Respect for themselves, their fellow athletes and the sport.

And with love.

There’s not a lot of visible love in track. With the Eatons, it’s different.

In the instant after Brianne was named the pentathlon winner, Ashton, in his warm-ups amid the long jump competition, bolted onto the track to embrace his wife.

That hug said not only that he knew what she had been through — because he was himself going through it — but how proud he was of her.

In a sport that has generated headlines for years, and intensely in recent months for all the wrong reasons, there is absolutely no question that Ashton and Brianne are emblematic of doing it the right way.

Don't doubt: Ashton and Brianne compete clean. There’s zero reason to entertain even a whisper of a suspicion. Never has been, never will be.

Enjoy this, people.

Better — cherish it.

Because even as Team Eaton stands atop the world, you can see that these 2016 indoors, in their way, may very well signal the beginning of the end.

Assuming Ashton re-qualifies this summer at the U.S. Trials in Eugene, which absent injury would seem a mortal lock, and then goes on to defend his London 2012 decathlon gold medal, the logical question awaits: what’s left to do? If, as seems likely, Brianne wins a medal in Rio, potentially gold, what's left to achieve?

Answer: nothing, really.

And these multi-event competitions are hard, really hard, on the body. He turned 28 in January. She turns 28 in December.

Brianne, who grew up in Saskatchewan and competes internationally for Canada, has lived in Eugene since 2007. She and Ashton went to school there, at the University of Oregon. Coming into this meet, she had won three world silver medals, two outdoor and one indoor.

She won that first international gold Friday night after leaping from third place to first in the final event, the 800, running an indoor personal-best 2:09.99.

Afterward, she said, “Whether it was a gold, silver or bronze, or no medal at all, I would have been satisfied with how I did.”

Asked about having Ashton nearby during competition, she said, “Seeing him calms me down. When you are in a stressful situation, competing at something like this, sometimes you want to give up or [you think], ‘I just can’t handle this pressure anymore.’ But seeing him on the sideline running toward me to help me with something helps calm me down a little bit and being able to celebrate this with him is really awesome and the cherry on the top.”

Ashton is the only combined events athlete in history to have won multiple world titles indoors and out, and to have secured multiple world records indoors and out. And of course that London 2012 gold.

“People call me the greatest athlete in the world and I don't feel like it,” Ashton said here earlier this week at a welcome dinner attended by both local dignitaries as well as staff and officials from the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, track’s worldwide governing body, including president Seb Coe.

“I just feel like the most fortunate person in the world.”

On Saturday afternoon, at the wrap-up of the pole vault part of the seven-event heptathlon, Ashton had the presence of mind to offer a shout-out to the thousands who had stayed at the Oregon Convention Center to watch him and the other athletes slogging through the heptathlon:

“Hey, I just want to say thanks to everybody for hanging out with us,” adding a moment later, “It really means a lot for you guys to stick around."

Last week, at the U.S. indoors, a stray pole vault bar cracked him on the top of the head, opening up a nasty cut that needed needed six stitches. No problem. He carried on, even making fun of it later on Twitter, calling it a “cutscene from a video game” and referring to himself as “#eatonstein.”

https://twitter.com/usatf/status/708759424588849152

https://twitter.com/AshtonJEaton/status/708773390304149504

In the 1000 meters on Saturday night, the event that wrapped up the heptathlon, Ashton knew going in he was in no position to set a world record. So instead of having American teammate Curtis Beach pace him for a potential record, it made way more sense for Ashton to push Beach — sixth overall heading into the run — in a bid to get Beach up to third.

Beach ran the 1000 in 2:29.04, a new indoor championships best, Eaton crossing third in 2:35.22.

"I feel like I was going a lot faster than what that clock said, I’ll tell you what," Eaton said after.

Beach ended up finishing fourth, just eight points away from a bronze medal. Mathias Brugger of Germany, who finished second in the 1000 at 2:34.10, ended up third overall, with 6126 points. Oleksiy Kasyanov of Ukraine took second, with 6182.

"I’d rather get fourth with that effort instead of third with a mediocre effort," Beach said. "This crowd was amazing. It was such a fun experience."

In winning the 2016 heptathlon, Ashton became the first three-time world indoor champion. His final score: 6470. No, not a world record. At the same time, Eaton now owns five of the top six heptathlon totals in history.

Asked if his victory measured up to his wife's, Ashton said, still standing on the track, "Honestly, no. I was thinking, you know what, it doesn’t matter what happens to me." Referring to Brianne's triumph, he said, "That made the whole meet for me."

And the entire crowd went, "Aww."

Heading into Rio, Ashton figures to be a big part of the NBC strategy for the Games, along with fellow track star Allyson Felix, swim king Michael Phelps and the gymnast Simone Biles.

The Olympic decathlon (men) and heptathlon (women) hold all the elements for outstanding a two-day reality-TV miniseries. The struggle, whether over 10 or seven events -- it's real.

After Rio, the stage would seem set for Ashton and Brianne to segue to whatever is the next chapter.

Broadcasting. Business. Foundation work. Parenthood.

Whatever.

A few days ago, the Eatons launched a concept called “What’s your gold?” The idea: to “share your journey toward a ‘personal gold’ — running a marathon, starting a business, fostering a shelter animal — whatever that ambition may be.”

After Rio, he — and she — have earned whatever they want to do.

"They help each other tremendously," their coach of six-plus years, Harry Marra, said. "They're a constant reinforcement to each other, and a support system," adding, "It's good to see."

Anyone with even a passing interest in track and field, however, ought to hope that each of them — and, as well, Marra, who is also a world-class person as well as coach — stays involved with the sport.

As things turn out, they may need track and field.

But the sport needs them more.

As their agent, Paul Doyle, told the IAAF website in a feature posted Thursday, “People often tell me that they think Ashton is the greatest athlete in the world. And I say, ‘No, he is the greatest human in the world.’ ”

At that Wednesday evening welcome dinner, Ashton told a story he had never before told in public.

When he was just 7 or 8, in a “small, mostly dirt-filled” little town in central Oregon called La Pine, about a half-hour south of  Bend, Ashton started long-jumping.

Well, not formally. He was just doing what kids do — playing around.

But that play is so fundamental, so essential, to track and field — which, after all, is the foundation of every sport.

Ashton said he would go outside in the yard and find two sticks. He put the first on the ground. That would be his take-off mark. The second he would put out some little distance away, to see if he could jump that far.

When he jumped past that second stick, he said, he would re-set. His new landing spot was where he fixed the second stick. When he passed that new spot, he would re-set again.

And again.

He does something of the same thing now in practice, Marra said. Now it's with ropes -- the second rope set at, say, 25 feet. If he beats that, Ashton says, move it out to 25-6.

In high school, Ashton said, he went for the first time to the Prefontaine Classic at Hayward Field in Eugene, typically a late May stop each year on what is now called the IAAF’s Diamond League circuit.

Crediting his coach at Mountain View High in Bend, Tate Metcalf, for knowing “how to inspire a young athlete,” Ashton said, “He took me to Hayward Field to watch the Prefontaine Classic. I would not be standing here today had I not been sitting in the front row of the grandstands at the Prefontaine Classic that day.

“While I loved running and doing the long jump, I didn't know what track and field could be. But when I went to the Prefontaine Classic, I saw these athletes who were absolute gods and goddesses to me. Not only that, I saw the love and admiration that I just had to give these athletes, that the fans in Oregon were giving to these athletes. I thought, 'I want to be a part of that.'

“Without that event, without seeing the potential of track and field, I don't think I'd be here.

“What you guys do – constantly working, day in and day out – to put something like that competition on, I just can't thank you enough.

“Somewhere in a room like this, people are doing that,” he said. “And little do they know there's this kid jumping around in the dirt whose life will one day be changed because he saw a track meet that these people put on, and the athletes that they were able to host displayed their skills so that this young athlete could be inspired. I honestly can't thank you guys enough.”

U.S. No. 1 overall -- in fast-changing world

BEIJING — With images of Jesse Owens and Luz Long on the big screens, Owens’ grand-daughter kicked off the final night of the 2015 track and field championships by presenting Usain Bolt his gold medal from the men’s 4x100 relay the night before.

This was, in a nutshell, the past and present of the sport. The future?

This, probably more than anything, from Seb Coe, the newly elected president of the IAAF, the sport’s governing body, taking over from Lamine Diack of Senegal, who served for 16 years: “We are more than a discussion of test tubes, blood and urine.”

He also said at a Sunday news conference, “We have a sport that is adorned by some of the most super-human outrageously talented people in any sport. Our challenge is to make sure the public know there are other athletes,” not just Bolt, “in our sport.”

This is not — not for a second — to discount the import of doping in track and field. But it’s clear things are changing.

The men’s 100 is often thought to be the dirtiest race in the sport; not so; a read of the historical record shows that, without question, it’s the women’s 1500.

And now that times in that event are often back at 4 minutes and over — the final Tuesday saw a slow, tactical 1500, won by one of the sport’s breakout stars, Genzebe Dibaba of Ethiopia, in 4:08 — more women from more countries can claim a legitimate shot at a medal.

That, actually, is one of the two big take-aways from these 2015 worlds: more athletes from more countries winning medals.

And, despite a disappointing medal performance by the U.S. team, the other: the emerging political influence internationally, concurrent with Coe’s presidency, of USA Track & Field.

Despite the chronic backbiting within certain circles — sometimes, track and field comes off as the only major sport in the world in which its most passionate adherents seemingly find joy by being so self-destructive — the sport could well be poised for a new era in the United States.

That depends, of course, on a great many factors. But everything is lined up.

Next year’s Rio Games are in a favorable time zone.

USATF has, in the last three years, under the direction of chief executive Max Siegel, made significant revenue leaps.

Beyond that, Eugene, Oregon, last year played host to the World Juniors and a meeting of the IAAF’s ruling council; the 2016 world indoors will be staged in Portland, Oregon; the 2021 world championships back in Eugene.

The 2017 track championships will be in London; in 2019, in Doha, Qatar.

By comparison: the swim world championships have never been held in the United States. This summer’s FINA championships were held in Kazan, Russia; in 2017, the swim worlds will be in Budapest; in 2019, in Gwangju, South Korea.

In elections that preceded this Beijing meet, all five of USATF’s candidates for IAAF office won; USATF president Stephanie Hightower got the highest number of votes, 163, for any candidate running for the IAAF council.

“You’ve got Seb leading the way but the change in the USATF position internationally is extremely significant,” Jill Geer, the USATF spokeswoman, observed Sunday night.

She also said, “Our development has to continue, and we don’t take our status as the world’s No. 1 track and field team for granted, at all,” adding, “No medals are guaranteed.”

From 2013 going back to 2004, the U.S. has been a 25-medal average team at world majors, meaning the Olympics or worlds.

Here, 18 overall, six gold.

Kenya and Jamaica -- with a victory late Sunday in the women's 4x4 relay -- topped the gold count, with seven. Kenya, overall: 16. Jamaica, overall: 12.

The upshot: for the first time at a world championships, dating to 1983, the U.S. finished third or worse in the gold-medal standings.

The last worlds at which the Americans won so few medals: Edmonton 2001, 13 overall, five gold; Athens 1997, 17 overall, six gold.

Here, the Chinese showed they are an emerging track and field threat, with nine medals, seven of them silver.

Ethiopia, Poland, Canada and Germany won eight apiece. Canada won two golds, in men’s pole vault, Shawn Barber, and on Sunday in men’s high jump, Derek Drouin, with a jump of 2.34 meters, or 7 feet, 8 inches.

Some specific examples of how the world is changing in real time:

The women’s 100 hurdles, long the domain of the Americans (and, recently, Australia’s Sally Pearson, who was hurt and did not compete here)?

Your Beijing podium -- Jamaica, Germany, Belarus.

The women’s 200? Gold went to Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands in a time, 21.63, surpassed in history only by the Americans Florence Griffith-Joyner and Marion Jones.

Asked the inevitable question, Schippers said, I’m clean.

Allyson Felix, the U.S. 200 star, didn’t challenge Schippers in that race; instead, Felix ran the 400, cruising to gold Thursday in 49.26, the year’s fastest time. Coe said the conversation ought to begin in earnest now about the possibility of allowing Felix the chance — like Michael Johnson in Atlanta in 1996 — to double in the 200 and 400 next year in Rio.

Without question, Bolt remains the dominant figure in track and field, and has been since his breakout performance here at the Bird’s Nest seven summers ago. Indeed, Coe said no single figure in international sport had captured the public imagination like Bolt since, probably, Muhammad Ali.

Assuming Bolt can keep himself in the good health he showed here, the world gets at least one more run-through of The Bolt Show, next summer in Rio, now with a worthy rival, the American Justin Gatlin, who took silver in both the 100 and 200. After that? Bolt’s sponsors want him to keep going through the London 2017 world championships; Bolt said he will have to think about it.

That relay Saturday night capped yet another incredible performance for Bolt. But for his false start at the Daegu 2011 worlds, he has won everything at a worlds or Olympics since 2008 — 100, 200, 4x1.

That was a familiar storyline.

This, too:

Mo Farah, the British distance star, nailed the triple double — winning the 5 and 10k, just as he had done at the Moscow 2013 worlds and the London 2012 Olympics.

The American Ashton Eaton won the decathlon, setting a new world record, 9045 points. He and his wife, the Canadian Brianne Theisen-Eaton, make up the reigning First Couple of the sport; she won silver in the heptathlon.

Dibaba, after winning the 1500 on Tuesday, took bronze in the 5000 Sunday night, a 1-2-3 Ethiopian sweep. Almaz Ayana broke away with about three laps to go, building a 15-second lead at the bell lap and cutting more than 12 seconds off the world championships record, finishing in 14:26.83.

Senbere Teferi outleaned Dibaba at the line. She finished in 14:44.07, Dibaba seven-hundredths behind that.

For junkies: Ayana covered the last 3000 meters in Sunday’s final quicker than any woman has run 3000 meters in 22 years.

Dibaba’s sister, Tirunesh, had held the world championship record, 14:38.59, set in Helsinki in 2005. Tirunesh Dibaba holds the world record still, 14:11.15, set in Oslo in 2008.

Then, of course, Beijing 2015 saw this all-too-familiar tale:

The U.S. men screwed up the 4x1 relay, a botched third exchange Saturday night from Tyson Gay to Mike Rodgers leading to disqualification after crossing the finish line second, behind Bolt and the Jamaicans.

Going back to 2001, the U.S. men’s 4x1 has failed — falls, collisions, botched handoffs — at nine of 15 major meets. Not good.

Job one is to get the stick around. If the Americans do that, they are almost guaranteed a medal — and, given a strategy that now sees Gatlin running a huge second leg, the real possibility of winning gold, as the U.S. team did in May at the World Relays, with Ryan Bailey anchoring.

Bailey did not qualify for these championships.

It’s not that the U.S. men — and women — didn’t practice. Indeed, all involved, under the direction of relay coach Dennis Mitchell, thought things were lined-up just right after the prelim, in which the same four guys — Treyvon Bromell, Gatlin, Gay, Rodgers — executed just fine.

The plan, practiced and practiced: hand-offs at about 10 to 12 meters in the zone in the prelims, 12 to 14 in the final. The plan, further: 28 steps in the final, 26 in the prelim — the extras accounting for the faster runs in the final, adrenaline and other factors.

Rodgers took responsibility for the essential mistake. He broke too early.

I don't make to many mistakes and I never make excuses I'll take the blame for this one, Ima learn from it and move on!

— Mike Rodgers (@Mr_Rodgers_DAT) August 29, 2015

As Jill Geer, the USA Track & Field spokeswoman put it in an interview Sunday night with several reporters, “In the relays, there’s a lot of pressure. everybody feels it,” athletes, coaches, staff.

She added, “They don’t accept a DQ any easier than the public does.”

Geer also noted, appropriately, that medals at this level are a function of three things: preparation, execution and luck, good or bad.

In the women’s 1500 on Tuesday, American Jenny Simpson — the Daegu 2011 gold medalist, the Moscow 2013 runner-up — lost a shoe. She finished 11th, eight-plus seconds behind Genzebe Dibaba.

Men’s decathlon: Trey Hardee — the Berlin 2009 and Daegu 2011 champion — got hurt halfway through the 10-event endurance test. He had to pull out.

Women’s 100 hurdles: 2008 Beijing gold and 2012 London silver medalist Dawn Harper-Nelson crashed out; Kendra Harrison was DQ’d; and the 2013 world champion, Brianna Rollins, finished fourth.

Women’s 4x4 relay: the Americans sent out a star-studded lineup, 2012 Olympic 400 champ Sanya Richards-Ross, Natasha Hastings, Felix and Francena McCorory, who had run the year’s fastest pre-Beijing time, 49.83.

Before the race, the four Americans went all Charlie's Angels.

Felix, running that third leg, then put the Americans in front with a 47.7-second split. But McCorory, windmilling with 90 meters to go, could not hold off Novlene Williams-Mills, and Jamaica won in a 2015-best 3:13.13. The Americans: 3:19.44.

It was the first Jamaican 4x4 relay worlds gold since 2001. The Jamaicans have never won the relay at the Olympics.

In the men’s 4x4, LaShawn Merritt reliably turned in a winning anchor leg to lead the U.S. to victory in 2:57.82.

Trinidad and Tobago got second, a national-record 2:58.2. The British, just as in the women’s 4x4, took third. The British men: 2:58.51; the British women, a season-best 3:23.62.

Earlier Sunday night, Kenyan men went 1-2 in the men’s 1500, Asbel Kiprop winning in 3:34.4, Elijah Manangoi 23-hundredths back.

The U.S. got three guys into the final, including 2012 Olympic silver medalist Leo Manzano and Matthew Centrowitz, second in the 1500 at the Moscow 2013 worlds, third at Daegu 2011.

The American finish: 8-10-11, Centrowitz, Manzano, Robby Andrews.

Manzano said afterward, “The first 800 was fine, but I thought I was just going to gear up like I did two days ago,” in the prelims, riding his trademark kick. “Unfortunately it didn’t quite pan out like that. Sometimes it just clicks in place, and today didn’t quite fit in there.”

A couple hours before that men’s 1500, Geer had said, “We had an awful lot of 4-5-6-7 finishes,” adding that “those are the kind of finishes where we will be drilling in and saying, how do we turn that 4-5-6 into a 1-2-3?”

The men’s 5k on Saturday, for instance: 5-6-7, Galen Rupp, Ben True, Ryan Hill.

Beating Farah? That’s an audacious goal.

But, Geer insisted, there is “nothing systemically wrong” with the U.S. effort.

“Our performance wasn’t necessary all the medals we had planned for or hoped for,” she said.

At the same time, she asserted, “When you look at our performance here, where we did well and maybe didn’t do well, if we can fix, which we absolutely can, even half the areas we had execution mistakes or under-performed, we will be extraordinarily strong in Rio.”

A decathlon record but more U.S. relay woe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eaton, 4:17.52.

Clear by 73-hundredths of a second.

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

The new world record: 9045 points.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It hasn’t, of course, been all bad.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If this all seems like something new, consider:

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the men’s side:

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

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

He would be missed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Americans ran in Lane 6, Jamaicans in 4.

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

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

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

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

Job not done.

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

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

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

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

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

Canada was jumped to third, 38.13.

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

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

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

Living in the moment: track's It Couple

The world’s greatest athlete is taking his first outdoor runs of the season in the pole vault. His coach, Harry Marra, is here, of course, at the Westmont College track, in the hills above Santa Barbara, California. His wife, Brianne, herself the reigning indoor and outdoor silver medalist in the women’s versions of the all-around event, is here, too, practicing her javelin throws and running some hard sprints.

Ashton Eaton is the 2012 gold medalist at the London Games in the decathlon. At the U.S. Olympic Trials earlier that year, he set the world record in the event. He is the 2013 Moscow decathlon world champion. He is also the 2012 and 2014 gold medalist in the heptathlon, the indoor version of the multi-discipline event. He holds the heptathlon world record, too, and missed setting it again at the 2014 indoor worlds by one second in the 1000 meters.

On this day, a bungee cord takes the place of the bar at 5 meters, or 16 feet, 4 ¾ inches. Eaton takes his practice runs. He doesn’t go one after the other, in sequence. No. He shares pole vault time, and graciously, with a 54-year-old doctor of holistic health, Victor Berezovskiy, and a 77-year-old clinical psychologist, Tom Woodring.

This scene summarizes perhaps all that is both sweet and unsettling about the state of track and field in our world in 2014.

It’s sweet because the fact that Ashton Eaton would so willingly, humbly take practice runs with these two guys speaks volumes about his character. Obviously, neither is coming anywhere close to 5 meters. It’s no problem. Eaton patiently helps them both with their marks. In turn, they watch his take-off points.

Sweet because Ashton Eaton and Brianne Theisen Eaton – he’s now 26, she’s 25 – are, by every measure, track and field’s It Couple. They are at the top of their games. Yet here they are, at the track, just like everyone – anyone – else, practicing. And practicing some more. And then some more, still.

Because, obviously, that’s how you get better. How even the best get better.

It’s hard work that gets you to the top and for those who have seen track and field tainted these past 25 or so years by far too many doping-related scandals, here are Ashton and Brianne, examples of the right stuff. Never say never about anyone. But Ashton and Brianne? So wholesome, Harry says, and he has been in the business for, well, a lot of years, and seen it all, and he adds for emphasis that they don’t even take Flintstone vitamins.

Ashton follows his pole-vaulting with a series of 400 hurdle splits, trying to get the timing down – how many steps between each? 13? All the way around? Does he cut the hurdle? Float? What’s right? She does her repeat 150s so hard that, when she’s done, it’s all she can do in the noontime sun to find some shade.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is how you rise to the top.

And yet – the questions have to be asked:

Is track all the better because it’s a kind of extended family where one of its biggest names can hang on a sunny morning practice with a 54-year-old and a 77-year-old?

Or isn’t that, in its way, kind of ludicrous?

Does LeBron James practice with a 54-year-old doctor of holistic health?

Do Peyton Manning or Tom Brady run 7-on-7 drills with a 77-year-old clinical psychologist at wide receiver?

It’s not that James, Manning and Brady don’t understand their responsibilities as stars. But this is – practice. This is not a fan meet-and-greet.

What if things were different for track and field? What if the decathlon champ was The Man, the way it was when Bruce Jenner and, before him, the likes of Bill Toomey, Rafer Johnson and others were venerated the way Manning, Brady and James are now?

It’s not just Ashton. Brianne is herself a major, major talent.

Of course, track and field does not hold the same place in the imagination that it once did. Dan O’Brien, the 1996 Olympic decathlon winner, is not The Man the way Jenner was. Bryan Clay, the 2008 Olympic decathlon winner – not The Man the way Jenner was.

And that’s no knock on either O’Brien or Clay.

Times simply have changed. Jenner won in Montreal in 1976. That is a long time ago.

Yet in Ashton and Brianne, track has a marquee couple.  Here are breakout stars in the making: doping-free, handsome, articulate, passionate about advancing track and field the same way Michael Phelps has always been for swimming. Phelps is on bus stop advertisements in Shanghai. Why aren’t these two, for instance, featured on the bright lights looking out and over Times Square?

For sure that would be better for the sport.

Would it be better for Ashton and Brianne – and Harry?

It’s all very complex.

Right now, track and field is, for all intents and purposes, Usain Bolt.

Isn’t there room for Ashton and Brianne, too?

The scene at Westmont this weekday morning is all the more striking because it comes amid the news Phelps will be racing again. The media attention enveloping Phelps is, predictably, striking.

Yes, Phelps is the best in the world at what he does.

Then again – so are these two.

Yet here are Ashton and Brianne and Harry – and, for that matter, a Canadian delegation that includes Damian Warner, the 2013 world bronze medalist in the decathlon – going about their business at Westmont, along with the others at the host Santa Barbara Track Club, with no interference, no autograph requests, no attention.

Phelps has always sought to live a normal life. But let’s be real: could Phelps walk around Westmont – or, for that matter, any college campus in the United States – with the same quietude?

After practice, there is a quick session in the Westmont pool. No one swims like Phelps. Then it’s over to the Westmont cafeteria, where lunch is five bucks and the beet salad is, genuinely, awesome.

Brianne says they consistently make a point of reminding themselves that these are the best days of their lives – to live, truly live, in the present and know that they are experiencing special moments.

“To somebody who is in it more for fame or money,” Brianne says, “they would have a lot different outlook on this.”

“The goal is to improve yourself,” Ashton says.

“The goal is excellence,” Harry echoes.

So sweet.

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.”