Other races, other events, surely command attention. But it is the men’s 100 that produced track and field’s biggest name, Usain Bolt. It is the men’s 100 for which the stadium went dark Sunday night. The crowd went ooh and ahh for a light show.
Then the bright lights came back up.
All eight guys settled into the blocks.
And on this Sunday night, Noah Lyles would silence – after one of the great hype campaigns in American history – every critic.
By five-thousandths of a second.
Attention, track and field nerds. This past weekend featured:
1/ the LA Grand Prix, on Friday and Saturday, at UCLA
2/ another Continental Tour Gold meet, in Tokyo, Sunday
3/ a Diamond League meet in Marrakesh, Sunday
4/ the Atlanta City Games, Saturday
5/ World Athletics Combined Events Tour (decathlon, heptathlon) in Götzis, Austria, Sunday
6/ and for the true specialists, World Athletics Race Walk Tour Gold meet in La Coruna, Spain, Saturday
The purist may say, look at the robust nature of the sport.
Anyone else says, this is scattergories bordering on idiocy.
EUGENE, Oregon — Fred Kerley has an active Twitter account. In it, he explains why he’s very good at running fast.
I love what I do, he says. That’s why, he goes on, I’m confident in everything I do.
To know Kerley is to understand, indeed appreciate, that he is not obnoxiously confident. He is from small-town central Texas, and he has an understated humility. “Track and field has changed my life, coming from where I come from,” he said late Saturday. “Every day I get to run track, it’s a blessing.” All the same, no one gets to be best at the 100 meters, the most alpha of alpha male disciplines, without considerable self-esteem. In that Twitter account, in which he lets the public in, at least a little, into bits and pieces of the real him, Kerley returns time and again to the notion that greatness, by implication, his, cannot be denied.
EUGENE, Oregon — The first world track and field championships to take place in the United States got underway Friday at Spaceship Hayward Field with three distinct threads. The question is which of the three will be the most memorable, will have the longest-lasting effect, when this show comes to its end in 10 days.
One, the weather is great (not baking at 110 Fahrenheit, like it was at the U.S. Trials last summer) but, as the kids would say, and all Olympic sports but especially track and field are trying to reach young people in the language they speak, Eugene does not have, not even remotely, BDE. Surprise! Not. Eugene is a remote college town and thus unsuitable for an event of this level. Bluntly, and as the world is now discovering, perhaps to its considerable dismay, it is Nowheresville, USA.
Two, athletes from a lot of different countries are having trouble getting to Eugene. To be precise, getting into the United States. Surprise! Not. This is the result of a variety of different factors. Then, when they get here, they’re housed in crummy college dorms. While the American team is in a hotel. All of this will resonate badly, and for a long time, elsewhere around the around. Guaranteed.
Three, the athletic performances surely will be world-class. What will the attendance figures be? Much more critically, the TV numbers? World Athletics and USA Track & Field are seeking to use this meet as a springboard to revive interest in the sport across the United States with an eye toward the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Will it? Can it?
LONDON — Coming into these 2017 IAAF world championships, the American Fred Kerley was the next big thing in the men’s 400.
More precisely, Fred Kerley of Texas A&M was the next big thing. He came to London having run 15 individual 400s in 2017. He had won 15.
It didn’t go Kerley’s way in the 400 final. He finished seventh, a result pre-figured in the semifinal, when he just barely qualified for the final on time. This is not to beat on Kerley. Just the opposite. It’s to pay him respect. He’s 22, and — counting the rounds and the final here — he ran 18 400s this year, plus a bunch of relays, plus some 200s to boot.
