Racing to a kidney transplant

BEIJING — These 2015 world track and field championships at the Bird’s Nest drew more than 1,900 athletes from more than 200 nations.

Every single one of them has a story. But no one has a story quite like Aries Merritt, your 2015 110-meter hurdles bronze medalist. In just a few days, he's going to have a kidney transplant.

Merritt, the 2012 Olympic 110 hurdles champion as well as the world record-holder, 12.80 seconds, run in Brussels that same Olympic year, took third in the 110 final Friday night, in a season-best 13.04.

Sergey Shubenkov of Russia ran a national-record 12.98 for the win. Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment took second, in 13.03.

This coming Tuesday, back in the United States, Merritt is due to have a kidney transplant. His sister, LaToya Hubbard, is to provide the donor kidney.

"I feel like my bronze medal is a gold medal, to be honest," Merritt said.

Also Friday, the American Ashton Eaton ran a ridiculous 45-flat in the 400 to top off his first day of the two-day test that is the 10-event decathlon. That’s a world record for the decathlon 400; Bill Toomey had run 45.63 in 1968.

That 45-flat would have gotten Eaton seventh in the open 400, won Wednesday night by South Africa's Wayde Van Niekerk.

After Day One, Eaton has 4703 points. He is on pace to break his own world record in the decathlon, 9039 points, set at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials.

In the women's 200, Dafne Schippers of the Netherlands, a former heptathlon standout, raced to the win in a 21.63, a world championships record.

Only Florence Griffith-Joyner and Marion Jones have run the women's 200 faster. Flo-Jo ran 21.34 and 21.56 at the 1988 Seoul Olympics; Jones' 21.62, run in 1998, was done at altitude, in Johannesburg.

"I know I'm clean and I know I work very hard for it," Schippers said afterward when asked about the other two.

Asked if she envisioned ever going back to the heptathlon, Schippers laughed and said, "I don't think so."

Jamaicans Elaine Thompson, in 21.66, and Veronica Campbell-Brown, in 21.97, went 2-3.

Just before these championships got underway last week, Merritt disclosed — in a story posted on the IAAF website — that he suffers from a rare genetic disorder found predominantly in African-Americans.

His condition was aggravated by a virus that had attacked his kidneys and, as well, his bone marrow.

Kidney function, he said, is down to under 20 percent. That's both kidneys. He said late Friday, "They’re not filtering properly. They don’t work."

Earlier this week, he had told reporters, “Just to be keeping that secret, it felt like a weight had been lifted when I was able to share it.

“The positive outreach has been amazing. I love running, I love competing. This is my life and here I am.”

Pause for just a moment. Think about all this.

That Merritt is here is, in the first instance, remarkable.

That he made the final all the more so, winning his semifinal Thursday night, in a then-season best 13.08.

That he won a medal — a testament to his considerable will.

“I am only 75 percent physically healthy,” Merritt had said after the semifinal. “That should be enough to give me a medal."

Seriously? For real: "I am still keeping it smooth. For the final there is nothing I want to change. I want to stay consistent. My rhythm is coming back — I am glad that it is coming back for the world championships.”

The sprint hurdles make for some of the great, truly great, races on the track and field program. Anything can happen, and often does.

The Americans had been expected to dominate both the men's 110 and women's 100. Didn't happen.

In the first women’s 100 semifinal Friday, for instance, the American Dawn Harper-Nelson crashed into the second hurdle and down to the track, rolling into the third hurdle; she is the Beijing 2008 gold and London 2012 silver medalist. She walked away, apparently unhurt.

For the record: Dawn Harper-Nelson is one of the classiest acts in track and field. This is what she said afterward: “I am sorry I let people down.”

In the next semi, another American, Kendra Harrison, was disqualified for a false start. She was not happy about it, and took a good long time leaving the track.

In the final, here was the finish, a result absolutely no one could have predicted:

Jamaica’s Danielle Williams with a personal-best 12.57 for the win, Cindy Roleder of Germany a personal-best 12.59, two-hundredths back, and Alina Talay of Belarus in third with 12.66, another national record.

The defending champion, American Brianna Rollins, finished fourth, in 12.67.

"The last years, you saw the trend," with Americans expected to dominate the women's sprint hurdles, Talay said, adding, "It was really tough to fight against them. You can see that European girls can do that, and we proved that today."

"And Caribbean girls," Williams said.

The men’s 110, particularly over the past few seasons, has been that singular event in which the top competitors in the world line it up and race each other, meet after meet.

By contrast, Usain Bolt and Justin Gatlin had not run against each other in the sprints — with the exception of the World Relays in the Bahamas this past May — since 2013. And in that relay, Gatlin ran the second leg for the U.S., Bolt the anchor leg for Jamaica.

Bolt, in a news conference Thursday night after winning the 200, Gatlin taking second, just as they had done in the 100 Sunday night, noted that he had been injured for most of 2014 and had to work himself back this year back into winning form.

“People were saying I was ducking Justin Gatlin most of the season,” he said, demurring, “It makes no sense to compete when I’m not at my best and Justin Gatlin is at his best. I’m going to lose.”

The first 110 world record, 15 seconds, dates to 1912. The benchmark now for a championship performance is 13 seconds, or under. Since they have been keeping records, before Friday night only 18 guys had gone sub-13.

Shubenkov makes it 19.

Three years ago, at his best, Merritt was essentially unbeatable. He won in London in 12.92 — after running 12.93 three times in a row before that, including at the U.S. Olympic Trials.

About a month after the Games, on September 7, 2012, Merritt ran that 12.80 in Brussels — his form and fluidity a thing of beauty whether you are a hard-core track fan, or just casually dropping in.

In that race, Merritt dropped seven-hundredths of a second off the standing world record, 12.87, which Dayron Robles of Cuba had run in 2008. It made for the record’s largest single time drop since 1981, when the American Renaldo Nehemiah became the first guy ever to run under 13; he went 12.93, cutting seven-hundredths off his own mark, 13-flat, which he had run two years before.

The next year, Merritt ran much, much slower.

After the 2013 world championships in Moscow — he finished sixth in the high hurdles — Merritt checked into the emergency room at the Mayo Clinic in Arizona.

That was October.

He didn’t leave the hospital until the next April.

The first concern was treating the virus. After that, the doctors’ focus was his kidneys.

"When they told me I'd never run again, my whole world ended in my mind," he said.

The condition, Merritt said, is called "collapsing FSGS," for "focal segmental glomerulosclerosis." He is obviously thinner than he was three years ago -- six pounds, he said. Too, he has undertaken a significant lifestyle change -- he can't process potassium so he can't, for instance, drink orange juice.

"It has been a struggle," he said Friday night. "It has been very tough for me these last couple years. Just to be here at these world championships shows I’m mentally tough and I have the heart of a champion."

In May 2014, Merritt showed up again to race. Again, the month before, he had been in the hospital. He ran 13.78 at the Steve Scott Invitational in California.

At the end of the summer of 2014, back in Brussels, he finished seventh in the Diamond League final. He said he was thrilled.

This year, he ran 13.12 at the Prefontaine Classic, in Eugene, Oregon, as May turned to June. A few weeks later, at the U.S. nationals, he qualified for the worlds by finishing third, in 13.19, behind David Oliver and Ronnie Ash.

Oliver had eased into Friday’s final with a 13.15 in the heats, 13.17 in his semi.

Ash never made it out of the start in the rounds. He flinched, according to the electronic timing system, and was DQ’d. Like Harrison Friday night, Ash did not think he had flinched. As the official IAAF report would later note in a delicate reference, “The American was not too happy at the decision and several minutes of confusion ensued before he finally left the track.”

Merritt went 13.25 to win his heat. Then, again, 13.08 for that win in the semis.

In the final, Oliver hit the first hurdle and got knocked out of rhythm. He finished seventh, in 13.33.

From that first hurdle, the race was clearly between Shubenkov, Parchment and Merritt.

Shubenkov, who is completely fluent in conversational English, said afterward, "It was a little bit of a surprise for me. It’s not every day a guy from Russia goes and wins the world championship in the hurdles and goes sub-13."

Both he and Parchment expressed admiration that someone in Merritt's condition could run, much less make the podium at a world championships.

"I still can not imagine how this is possible," Shubenkov said, adding a moment later, "Just now I learned he has such a severe condition. It's just, I don't know, beyond my realization. I can't think about it -- how it's possible."

Parchment: "I think he’s a very strong guy. To be here still competing … it’s really great, and i congratulate him on getting a medal here.

"I hope," he also said, "his surgery will go well and we will see him next year … in Rio."

USATF and the notion of homework

For years, the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Track & Field were the two reliable punching bags in the American Olympic scene. The problem at both was much the same: constant management turnover and an unwieldy governance structure, each encumbered by a board of directors numbering in the triple digits that created an environment rife with petty politics. Over the past several years, both have turned it around. But with USATF in particular, there remains a dissident cohort for whom seemingly nothing seems to be good enough. Case in point: there’s a new, professionally produced commercial featuring several track-and-field stars, and it’s even airing on network television. This has to be a huge win, right? Exposure for a sport that needs it? For some, apparently not.

Chief executive Max Siegel took over USATF on May 1, 2012. In 2013 and 2014, the federation announced nine new sponsorship deals, including seven just last year. The big one, of course — a 23-year deal with Nike approaching $500 million.

At the 2014 annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., in December, USATF delegates were shown the organization’s rise in revenue from $19 million to $34 million; its jump in net assets from $3 million to $17 million; its commitment to spend an additional $9 million on athlete programs between the years 2015 and 2020.

Moreover, and this diversity statistic jumps out from among the U.S. Olympic federations, which can hardly claim anything like it — two-thirds of the USATF board is African-American.

And now a national television commercial?

Apparently not good enough for some, and in particular Lauren Fleshman, the two-time (2006, 2010) U.S. 5,000-meter champion, who has emerged in recent months as a vocal critic of USATF policies.

The TV spot, entitled, ”You’re Welcome,” features action shots of U.S. stars past and present laced with some of the biggest names from today talking; it ran last weekend on NBC.

On the one hand, Ms. Fleshman called the commercial “awesome.” On the other, she complains that the video contains a “massive disparity” in the way it treats “Nike vs. non-Nike athletes,” asserting this is a “problem that goes far beyond this one video, and will keep expensive initiatives like this one from making a real impact on the lives of athletes going forward.”

Her apparent primary complaint: that USATF cropped the logos of non Nike-sponsored athletes in the commercial.

“USATF has their salaries guaranteed for the next 23 years,” she proclaims at the end of her blog. “We don’t. And if USATF is entering into sponsorship contracts that demand they shrink us, silence us, prevent us from thriving, and stifle competition in the marketplace, that isn’t right. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s illegal.”

Let’s start here: no one at USATF has brought up as a hammer the First Amendment, the Commerce Clause to the Constitution or, for that matter, the notion of monopoly.

Indeed, one of the deals USATF announced in December at that meeting was with shoemaker Hoka One One, to sponsor a middle-distance race, with double athlete prize money and a TV-quality webcast.

Meanwhile, in the very same sentence in which Ms. Fleshman notes that it’s “awesome” to have a commercial, she also — in parentheses — asks “was it an MSI project like Road to Sopot? I’m curious.”

MSI stands for “Max Siegel Inc.”

It’s no secret that Siegel is a businessman. Indeed, on the MSI webpage it declares, “Our access to sports, multicultural, media and entertainment properties helps us to seamlessly integrate clients and properties with their target markets — and beyond.”

What is it about Siegel, who is African-American, that seems to be so off-putting to detractors?

The USOC has made diversity and inclusion a point of emphasis under chief executive Scott Blackmun, particularly in the management ranks of the national governing bodies.

Yet from the start of Siegel’s tenure, it has been as if nothing could be good enough. Consider the controversy over the tie in the women’s 100-meter dash at the 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials. Siegel had come on the job just weeks before. Yet he took considerable heat because there wasn’t a proper procedure in place? Where in all of this was Robert Hersh, the rules guru — the longtime U.S. seat-holder on the IAAF council, whom the USATF delegates voted in Anaheim in December to send back to the IAAF, only to see the USATF board opt for Stephanie Hightower instead?

Really, you do wonder.

Because wouldn’t you think that a chief executive who — now two-plus years in — brings in big financial numbers ought to be cut some slack?

At the beginning of her blog, Ms. Fleshman suggests, “Feel free to do your own homework.”

To emphasize, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion. At the same time, the danger of throwing stuff out there without doing your homework is that it if it’s not opinion — that is, if there are actually facts out there — those opinions, often needlessly, rile people up. And then the stuff that gets people riled up can get repeated as if it were gospel.

Which in the case of Lauren Fleshman’s blog — you have to ask, are there facts?

Or, as she herself notes in her Dec. 19 Runner’s World blog, “… if you’re gonna fling mud, come out with the evidence.”

The videos about which she inquires that recapped the journey to the 2014 indoor world championships? They were called “Path to Poland,” not “Road to Sopot,” and were executive produced — like the “You’re Welcome” commercial — by Siegel in his capacity as USATF chief executive. Not, repeat not, as MSI guy.

It should be worth noting that the “Path to Poland” series last year focused on the the breakout 800-meter star Ajee Wilson (adidas), the middle-distance runner Morgan Uceny (adidas), the everlasting Bernard Lagat (Nike) and shot-putter Ryan Whiting (Nike). If you’re keeping score, that’s two Nike athletes, two not.

The “You’re Welcome” spot features stars from yesteryear as well as now. That means USATF had to use footage owned by the USOC and the International Olympic Committee. Such usage involves specific restrictions from both entities, including what logos could be shown and where the commercial could be aired (to use a term of art, it was geo-restricted).

Such restrictions — and this is a USOC rule, not anything to do with USATF — means the commercial could not show any logos outside the so-called “Olympic family.”

No logos were airbrushed, manipulated, digitally altered. There are and were not any conspiracies.

Of the seven current athletes in the spot, four are not Nike athletes.

Indeed, one of the four, Brenda Martinez, bronze medalist in the 800-meters at the 2013 world championships in Moscow, posted on her Instagram account a retort to Ms. Fleshman’s article that said, in part, “Please take me out of [your] article,” adding, “We have it really good here in the US compared to other countries. Without the support of @newbalance & @usatf I wouldn’t have a medal.”

http://instagram.com/p/ysWM78yd8M/?modal=true

Ms. Fleshman did not take Ms. Martinez out. She did post an addendum to her blog that said, “Others have perfectly valid opinions that differ from mine, including Brenda Martinez.” To her credit, Ms. Fleshman added on Ms. Martinez’s Instagram account, “I’m sorry if my post distressed you.”

Another athlete, David Oliver, the 2013 world champ in the 110-meter hurdles, made these posts to his Twitter account:

Track and field gets a cool commercial on TV and people in the sport STILL find a way to complain about something...

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

if USATF only used nike sponsored athletes, people would complain about that. Didn't even notice the "controversy" was happy we were on TV

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

And this, referring to hurdles competitors Liu Xiang of China and Dayron Robles of Cuba, and to the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body:

Did IAAF (Adidas organization) ad with Liu and Robles for '11 Worlds. Guess who's logo was shown. Did I care, absolutely not, was very happy

— David Oliver (@doliversub13) February 4, 2015

At any rate, going back to the original assertion, that USATF pits Nike against non-Nike athletes:

Of USATF’s athlete support funds, more than 60 percent of those supported are non-Nike athletes. Here is the real disparity: USATF financially supports more athletes not affiliated with its primary sponsor than it does those who wear Nike gear.

Top-tier athletes get five-figure support each year, the kind Ms. Martinez is talking about. It’s all part of an $11-million annual athlete support package that also includes sports medicine, sport performance workshops, TV and webcast coverage with athletes wearing — whatever.

Is USATF truly discriminating? At the end of 2013, it sent out a photo book to sponsors. The very first picture: pole vault star Jenn Suhr in adidas gear. Go through the book. There’s Duane Solomon, that year’s U.S. 800 champ, in his Saucony gear.

Ms. Fleshman notes that a USATF calendar was “recently mailed out to all USATF members” that included a photo of “Leo Monzano,” note the misspelling, who is the 1500 silver medalist from the London 2012 Games, wearing a Nike uniform. When not wearing a national-team uniform, Manzano is sponsored by Hoka One One. “He was not asked permission nor compensated for a photo being used that undercut his sponsor relationship,” she asserted.

The calendar was given away, not sold, to USATF membership. USATF lost money on the calendar, which it paid to produce and send out. It was a gift to members in a bid to get them excited about the red, white and blue — and Manzano is the first American to have won a medal in the men’s 1500 since Jim Ryun in 1968, more than 40 years.

Then, this — in the third paragraph from the end in her blog, Ms. Fleshman says, “USATF selling the national team uniform is one thing. But what else have they sold? Serious question. Email me if you know.”

How about just doing it right here? Serious answer:

— Major grass-roots initiative to Hershey (Run Jump Throw).

— Program providing educational opportunities to elite athletes, among others (University of Phoenix).

— Program that provides free language training to top athletes and provides royalties directly to athletes (Rosetta Stone).

— An app that provides royalties directly to athletes (Coaches Eye).

— Title sponsorship to the Hoka One One Middle Distance Classic, a meet Ms. Fleshman herself has competed at, with the money going directly to the meet and athlete support.

All of that is in the last year.

As was noted in the last column in this space about USATF, reasonable criticism, delivered in a spirit of tolerance and good will, is always fair game.

But homework — requisite due diligence — is eminently fair, too.

Super high-vision: a green bottle with a long neck

When high-definition television came along, it revolutionized the game. Watching sports got way better all over the world for literally millions, if not billions, of viewers. For fans of American football: think, for instance, of Mario Manningham's clutch 38-yard catch that sparked the New York Giants' winning drive in Super Bowl XLVI, and the sideline tap-dance that was part of it. High-def made it all so real.

Now comes super high-vision technology.

Watching SHV is what is like when you made that jump a few years back from your standard TV set to high-def, only way better. After seeing SHV, even high-def feels like watching Super Bowl clips from the 1970s or '80s.

You can hardly believe the level of detail that all of a sudden snaps into crystal-clear focus. It's that good. That amazing.

In a word, SHV is a game-changer.

And it's one the Olympic world has already begun to embrace.

In London, the Olympic Broadcasting Services helped the Japanese broadcaster NHK -- and the BBC -- put together substantial coverage, including the opening ceremony and the men's 100-meter final.

Developers at NHK recently showed off the technology to a small group of journalists. It was all part of the International Olympic Committee evaluation commission's assessment of Tokyo's 2020 Summer Games bid.

Of course the commission saw, too, what the technology could do. The members got to see some of the imagery -- "tape" seems such an outmoded word -- from the ceremony and Bolt's 9.63-second victory.

One of the highlights of the ceremony, of course, was when the five Olympic rings were moved into place atop Olympic Stadium. In SHV, the sparks from the molten medal appeared to literally leap off the screen. The sound from the 22.2-channel surround-sound speakers -- again, 22.2-channels -- provides a ridiculously immersive experience.

Bolt's victory was noteworthy not just because, as he proclaimed time and again, it set him toward becoming a "legend."  He would finish that off later in the Games by winning the 200 meters and then the Jamaican team would win the 4x100 relay in world-record time. Before the start of the 100, 34-year-old Ashley Gill-Webb, who somehow made his way into the stadium and into the seats near the start line without a ticket, threw a bottle at Bolt, hoping to disrupt him.

Gill-Webb, who suffered from bipolar disorder and was having a "manic episode," was found guilty in January in a British court of public disorder.

In SHV, you can see not only that Gill-Webb is wearing a blue-sleeved shirt in the middle of the crowd but that he is preparing to throw the bottle.

Too, that it's a green bottle and has a long neck.

That the bottle bounces in the middle of the track behind the runners.

That, as the field makes its way toward the finish line toward the cameras, American Ryan Bailey, in Lane 8, steps across Bolt's lane line, in Lane 7. There was no protest filed; indeed, there was no violation in this instance, as there would be in, say, a 200-meter race, because technically Bailey was running farther by stepping into Bolt's lane.

The level of granular detail makes it so evident, however, that Bailey steps across the line -- a fascinating aspect to add to the historic context of the race.

This kind of forensic clarity, moreover, would be invaluable in helping to analyze races such as the 110-meter hurdles final at the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, in which Cuba's Dayron Robles crossed the line first, only to be disqualified after tangling with China's Liu Xiang after the ninth hurdle between Lanes 5 and 6; Liu was declared the winner.

Another example: the now-infamous third-place tie at last summer's U.S. Trials between Allyson Felix and Jeneba Tarmoh in the women's 100-meter dash.

Would SHV have definitively resolved the tie? No one can say.

Would it provide more evidence? For sure.

Where 3D has tried -- and is still trying -- to make its way, SHV seems poised to be the next advance in broadcasting technology.

Even if it's maybe years away from being in your living room, maybe five or so if you live in Japan or South Korea, and though if you were an actor or actress of a certain age it might keep you awake at nights with the level of potentially frightening stuff it would enable audiences to see about you, it also just might mean -- eventually -- the end of bad refereeing.

It's that crystal clear.

At the Sochi 2014 Winter Games, OBS will again cover the opening ceremonies; this time the showcase sport will be figure skating.

NHK will be flying the recordings to Tokyo for later review. Yuna Kim dominated this week's world figure skating championships. In SHV, she figures to be, in a word, spectacular.

Liu Xiang is most definitely back

EUGENE, Ore. -- If all had gone according to plan, of course, Liu Xiang would have repeated as Olympic champion in the 110-meter hurdles before a delirious home crowd in 2008 in Beijing. Fate had other plans. The image that lingers still, nearly four years later, is Liu, in the morning glare, pulling out of the heats, injured.

It is so desperately difficult to recover from an injury as severe as the torn Achilles tendon that sidelined one of the great hurdlers of this, or any, time. But Liu served notice Saturday, and emphatically, that he is back.

Liu not only won the Prefontaine Classic against a stacked field -- essentially everyone expected to be in the Olympic final save Cuba's Dayron Robles -- he did so in a wind-aided 12.87 seconds.

That equaled Robles' world-record time, set four years ago in the Czech Republic.

Liu is not especially given to public displays of emotion. But here, given the dominating nature of what he had done, given the time, he went windmilling around the track.

It wasn't showboating. It was more child-like glee.

"I love Eugene," Liu said later, speaking through a translator. "I like all the crowd here. So I am happy not only because of my time."

American Aries Merritt, the 2012 world indoor champ, finished second, in 12.96. The 2011 outdoor champ, Jason Richardson of the United States, finished third, in 13.11.

Dexter Faulk, another American, finished fourth, in 13.12.

David Oliver, the 2008 Olympic bronze medalist from the United States who came to Eugene last year having won 18 of 19 races, who won here last year in 12.94, took fifth, in 13.13. He insists he is fully recovered from the injuries that slowed him during the latter part of 2011.

Robles had been due to run here but, on Thursday, it was announced that he would be a no-show, purportedly because of visa problems. It was also announced that he would make the race this coming week in New York.

The Pre is a Nike event. This New York race is an adidas event. Robles is sponsored by adidas. Whether it was geopolitics, or shoe politics, that kept Robles out of Oregon -- such things are as unknowable as grassy knolls.

If Merritt was considered by some a sleeper -- no more. He had said in the lead-up to this race that he expected it would take a 12.93, or better, to win, adding, 'I have training sessions when I'm running world-record pace."

Richardson was named 2011 world champion after a bang-bang sequence near the finish line in Daegu. Robles crossed the line first. But he was then disqualified, video showing that he had twice touched Liu's arm going over the ninth and 10th hurdles. That elevated Richardson to first, Liu to second.

At the 2012 world indoors in Istanbul, Robles didn't run. Merritt won. Liu finished second.

A few weeks ago in Shanghai, Liu won in 12.97. That night, Oliver ran second, Richardson third, Merritt fourth.

"He's just amazing," Richardson said Saturday of Liu. "It almost goes without saying."

What makes Liu's performance in Eugene all the more amazing is this:

The wind was "wind-aided" because, at 2.4 meters per second, it was a tailwind. Hurdlers hate this. This is simple logic. A tailwind pushes a hurdler closer to each of the hurdles. So the fact that Liu equaled the world record under these conditions is even more impressive, not less, as "wind-aided" might otherwise suggest.

Roger Kingdom, the 1984 and 1988 Olympic gold medalist, has a wind-aided 12.87 in the books as well -- in Barcelona, on Sept. 10, 1989. (The wind that day: 2.6.) What that means, in plain English: it's not a world record but no one has ever run faster than Liu ran Saturday in Eugene.

Liu understands English reasonably well. But when he meets the press at meets such as these, he typically answers Chinese reporters first and then responds to English speakers through a translator. The answers delivered in translation are necessarily filtered and more bland than they might, perhaps, be in the original.

Even so, you know he knows he's back. Come London, watch out for Liu Xiang.

"Of course I am happy," he said. "But it is just a race. For me, I need to look forward."

No fear, one DQ, two golds

DAEGU, South Korea -- John Smith, the Southern California track coach for whom there are two ways -- his way and the highway -- has a mantra he particularly likes. Fear, he says, is nothing but "false evidence appearing real." There's no fear in anything, he says. Get out there and 100 percent do your best. Just execute.

Pretty simple stuff, amazingly powerful stuff, and on a Monday night in Daegu, it led to two remarkable races, and yet more incredible twists at a meet that seems to have been summoned by destiny to produce the unpredictable. They will be talking not just about the women's 100 but, especially, about the men's 110 hurdles at these 2011 world championships for a long, long time.

Carmelita Jeter and Jason Richardson train with John Smith. The day after Usain Bolt was disqualified for false-starting in the men's 100, this went down:

Jeter, who had for years been chasing the dream of being champion, hammered to victory in the women's 100. She is 31 years old, will be 32 in November, and some will doubtlessly find her speed and victory now incredulous. She ran 10.90 to win.

And in the 110 hurdles, Richardson, the fourth guy in the race behind the so-called Big Three, initially appeared to have won silver behind Cuba's Dayron Robles, with China's Liu Xiang third, and David Oliver, the expected American star, fifth.

Robles crossed in 13.14; Richardson in 13.16; Liu in 13.27. Oliver went 13.44.

Robles ran in Lane 5, Liu in 6. Liu staggered to the line. A video review made plain why. Robles had made contact with him late, and not just once but twice.

As the video showed, Robles had drifted way toward the outside of Lane 5.

The first contact came over the ninth hurdle. That one seemed to disrupt Robles more than Liu.

The second contact, however, caused Liu to break stride heading into the tenth, and final, hurdle. He hit it with his trailing knee, stumbled off it and then lurched toward the finish.

After the race, the Chinese filed a protest, saying Robles ought to be disqualified. The race referee said, you're right, and an appeal jury upheld the referee's decision.

This is how Robles found out about it. He and Liu were in doping control together. Liu said, hey, I just heard on TV that you're out.

Really? Robles said.

"I'm really sorry about the situation," Liu said later at a news conference, adding, "I am good friends with Robles. What I like is a happy competition. I don't know what else to say."

This is how Richardson learned he had been moved up to gold:

He was down under the stadium, talking to a bunch of reporters about winning silver, when Robles stormed through without saying a word. Hey, guess what, the reporters said, Robles has been DQ'd. You're the gold medalist.

For Robles and Cuba, of course, this was a decision fraught with political meaning. Robles was not only going to be stripped of the gold -- he was going to be vanquished, and an American was going to take his place at the top.

For Jason Richardson, there was none of that. It was all about sport and his own dream.

Tears welled up in his eyes.

"Slight perspiration," he said with a laugh as the reporters pressed in even closer.

Jason Richardson was nothing but class.

"My first reaction is that it's disappointing that somebody so great, with such accomplishments, was kind of robbed of the opportunity to really display his athleticism," he said.

"I respect Robles completely. Even when I wasn't running fast, Robles always spoke -- always maintained good rapport -- with me. Under other circumstances, he wouldn't be able to have that medal. What I will say is that I don't know about anybody else's god, but my god is bigger than myself, bigger than this race and, um, I guess I'm the gold medalist."

Later in the evening, at a news conference, he said, "I had to respect the fact that any medal would be a great medal for me. I was completely satisfied with silver," adding a moment later, "Drama or no drama, it is what it is."

He also said, "It has been gratifying to see the hard work I have put in resulting in success," and anyone who knows a John Smith camp knows there is indeed hard work involved.

Richardson said as well, "I have heart. That is bigger and better than anything."

Jeter, for her part, initially appeared stunned to have won -- stunned that the dream she had chased for so long, that had animated all the hard workouts with Smith the taskmaster since she had gotten bronze at the worlds in Berlin in 2009, had finally come true.

"I didn't want to have the same color again," she would say later.

It wasn't, she said, until the camera trained itself on her that she realized, yes, she had done it. The camera finds the winner. That's how she knew -- even before she could find what she was looking for on the scoreboard.

Veronica Campbell-Brown of Jamaica --  the 2007 100 world champion, among many accomplishments -- took second, in 10.97.

Kelly-Ann Baptiste of Trinidad and Tobago got third, in 10.98.

Carmelita Jeter said she ran with no fear. "I ran," she said, "for my life."

David Oliver, Mr. Sub-13

EUGENE, Ore. -- David Oliver knew it from the start Saturday. Literally, he knew it from the start of the 110-meter hurdles at the Pre Classic here at historic Hayward Field.

This was an entirely different race than the one three weeks ago in Shanghai. There, an ugly start had cost him the race. He'd come to Shanghai having won 18 in a row. The bronze medalist at the 2008 Beijing Games, he was the world's hottest hurdler. But just like that -- yech. He lost in Shanghai to Liu Xiang, the 2004 Olympic champion.

On such instants do races turn.

David Oliver won Saturday's 110 hurdles in 12.94 seconds, best in the world so far in 2011. Liu took second, in 13-flat.

All the work, the sweat, the grind, the stuff that nobody sees because nobody wants to see practice -- it all goes into such instants, when all anyone cares about is the gun and the flash and the color and the noise and the guy in the blocks, the one who has been putting in the time and the work, has to take all that nervous energy and redemptive energy, and pour it into focus and calm.

And doing what he knows how to do.

In Shanghai, Oliver was saying after this race Saturday in Eugene, a botched start put him out of balance. Three steps down the track -- his leg buckled.

That quick, for him the race was essentially done.

Oliver is not only professional enough, he's good enough, that he managed to recover enough to come in second in Shanghai, in 13.18. Liu winning in 13.07.

After coming home from China, Oliver said, he went home to Florida, and smoothed things out. Switching from eight to seven steps had changed his power leg; that meant a variety of adjustments, including at the start, where he was doing way too much thinking instead of simply letting his body do what it knew how to do; that's what he needed to fix after Shanghai.

In Eugene, he made it look clean and easy.

When an athlete is on his or her game, it's obvious. "I know it from the first couple of steps," Oliver said.

On Saturday, Oliver knew it.

Before yet another standout crowd here in Eugene, Liu started well. Better than Oliver, probably. But no matter.

Oliver's start was solid, so good that by the third hurdle Oliver caught Liu. The race was his.

Liu, speaking through a translator, said he was satisfied with his time Saturday but not with his speed and power, particularly the critical final third of the race. He also said his foot -- a nagging concern -- was still maybe a little sore.

"Close to the finish, I feel very bad," Liu said. "I can do better next time."

The thing is, David Oliver can do better next time, too. Though 12.94 in early June is fast, particularly for early in the season, this was not the best field he's going to face; though Liu was here,  2008 Beijing gold medalist Dayron Robles of Cuba, for instance, was not.

The U.S. nationals are back here at Hayward Field later this month. Then come the world championships in South Korea at the end of the summer.

"You can run all the 12s you want to if you don't take care of business at the championships," David Oliver said Saturday, adding a moment later for emphasis, "It's the difference between winning and being successful."