Speaking up about what is so obviously right

EUGENE — The women’s 100 hurdles here Friday at the 2016 U.S. Olympic Track Trials proved one of those rare sports events that truly lived up to expectations. It was the race of the meet: Brianna Rollins winning in 12.34 seconds, the second-fastest Trials final ever.

The second- through seventh-place finishers made for the fastest finishes for place in Trials history. Kristi Castlin took second, in 12.5, Nia Ali — just 14 months after giving birth to a son, Titus — 12.55.

The immediate aftermath made the race all the more memorable. Castlin, given a moment on NBC, said this:

"I really just want to dedicate this race to every single family, every person who has to go on after losing someone they love to gun violence," adding,  "It really was heavy on my heart, so I really wanted to dedicate that to everyone in the world who's had to deal with that.”

Many will say that sports are, or ought to be, separate from politics. Indeed, it’s tempting here in snug little college-town Eugene -- and, more, within the track and field bubble that is historic Hayward Field, with a stadium-record 22,847 jammed in on Saturday -- to deem events in Louisiana, Minnesota and Texas far away.

This ignores reality.

As the International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach put it in a speech in South Korea in 2014, “In the past, some have said that sport has nothing to do with politics, or they have said that sport has nothing to do with money or business. And this is just an attitude which is wrong and which we can not afford anymore.

“We are living in the middle of society and that means we have to partner up with the politicians who run this world.”

He also observed, in a speech at the United Nations in November 2013, that it “must always be clear in the relationship between sport and politics that the role of sport is always to build bridges,” adding, “It is never to build walls.”

To that end, sports stars can have a powerful impact in advancing precisely the sort of dialogue we — all of us — need as we head further into the heat of a summer that, with two potentially volatile political conventions coming up, increasingly seems to evoke the discord and discontent of 1968.

Across the United States, Saturday saw protests tied to police shootings of black men: in Baton Rouge, San Francisco, Chicago, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Newport, Rhode Island.

The flag at the southern end of Hayward Field has been flying this second half of these Trials at half-mast — in unspoken testimony to our country’s unhealed wounds connected to race and policing.

If anyone needs a living reminder of how far we have come and how far we have yet to go — John Carlos, whose black-gloved left fist along with Tommie Smith’s right made history at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, has been here in Eugene this week, a powerful reminder of how we can all do better.

If Friday's women's 100 hurdles was spectacular, so too was the bang-bang-bang sequence that closed Saturday's run: the men's 5000, won by 41-year-old Bernard Lagat; the men's 200, won by Justin Gatlin, who earlier in the meet had taken the 100, with 400 winner LaShawn Merritt running second; and the men's 110 hurdles, won by University of Oregon star Devon Allen.

Punctuating that brilliance: an appeal from Gatlin, over the Hayward loudspeakers that we all do better by each other.

"There is a lot that has been going on in America the last couple days," he said a few moments later, in the press tent. "It's sad that it happens around the 4th of July, when we should all be proud to be Americans.

"I just told everyone in the stadium, I said, I challenged them: 'Love someone. Leave the stadium, because there's so much love in this stadium the last couple days. Take that love with you. Just give it to somebody you have never loved before.' Go up to them and say, 'Hey, I love you for being an American.'

"We need that as Americans. When we are overseas, sometimes you don't see an American flag. Maybe sometimes you see one American flag. Those people holding up American flags are so proud to be Americans. And I want everybody to understand that when we go down to Rio, we are representing the United States of America. We want to represent with pride. It's just so sad to see everything that is happening right now. I just want everybody to be happy."

Gun violence has been a scourge on the American landscape for far too long.

In Kristi Castlin's case, the issue is deeply personal.

Her father, Rodney Castlin, was shot to death on December 7, 2000. He was the night manager of a motel in Kennesaw, Georgia, killed in a robbery that produced $304. He was just 36.

Just weeks ago, James Lorenzo Randolph, now 34, was convicted of multiple felonies in connection with the shooting, including murder, and sentenced to three consecutive life terms plus 35 years. He was connected to the case in 2012 by a fingerprint finally run through the FBI's national database.

Kristi Castlin turned 28 on Thursday. She was just 12 when her father was murdered.

"I definitely know first-hand now it feels, not just to be a child but to lose someone you love to gun violence," she said in an interview, adding, "Things that money buys, all the material things -- when you lose someone that you love,  it’s really hard. It’s just sad whether black, white or indifferent, people treating lives like they are disposable."

We need more of this.

More stories about the real-life impact of gun violence.

More real people -- and that includes athletes -- to speak up about what's so obviously right.

We need initiatives like the one the NBA launched last December — with stars such as Stephen Curry, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Paul and Joakim Noah lending their voices to a pubic-service announcement in support of Everytown for Gun Safety. It ends with Curry, the Golden State Warriors star, saying, “We can end gun violence.”

In the same vein, LeBron James, the Cleveland Cavaliers star, has been outspoken on the matter. He took to Twitter Thursday with this:

https://twitter.com/KingJames/status/751288463375233025

Serena Williams, the tennis star, won the Wimbledon women’s singles title on Saturday, a record-tying 22nd Grand Slam; later Saturday, Serena and sister Venus Williams won the Wimbledon women’s doubles championship, a 14th Grand Slam doubles title together.

Here was Serena Williams a few months ago in Wired magazine:

"So to those of you involved in equality movements like Black Lives Matter, I say this: Keep it up. Don’t let those trolls stop you. We’ve been through so much for so many centuries, and we shall overcome this too (see “Get Up, Stand Up”). To other people, I say: When someone’s harassing someone else, speak up! J.K. Rowling spoke up for me this summer, and it was an amazing feeling — I thought, 'Well, I can speak up, too.' ”

To be clear: it’s not that every athlete, whether on the Olympic team or not, has a responsibility to speak up.

No one is saying that is an imperative.

But it’s also the case that the U.S. track team, along with the U.S. basketball teams, makes for the picture of the diverse and multicultural America that we genuinely are in these early years of the 21st century.

With that comes opportunity.

"We have a voice," Gatlin also said. "We should be able to use that voice with love and caring."

And unlike the basketball teams — in particular, the NBA stars — track and field athletes are way more often built like most of us, meaning the intimidation factor for the average fan is way lower. Also, the track stars tend to be remarkably accessible.

Before Saturday’s action at Hayward, the distance standout Mary Cain was walking down Agate Street, stopping — just like everyone else — at the long light at Franklin Boulevard.

A few minutes later, Matthew Centrowitz — it would be shocking if he isn’t top-three in Sunday’s men’s 1500 final — went jogging by on Franklin, out for an off-day slow run.

DeeDee Trotter, the three-time Olympian at 400 meters, bronze medalist in 2012 and two-time gold winner in the relays (2004, 2012), saw her 2016 bid get as far as the semifinals.

On Saturday, she posted to Twitter:

https://twitter.com/DTrott400m/status/751858033832046592

Similarly, Hazel Clark, three times an Olympian at 800 meters, said on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/hazelclarktv/status/751887521513177089

Michael Tinsley, London 2012 silver medalist in the men's 400-meter hurdles, said Friday after posting the top qualifying time, 49.15, in the event semifinals,  “I want to start off saying that black lives matter. My condolences to the people who lost their lives to cops and condolences go out to the cops that were killed in Dallas.”

Jason Richardson, London 2012 silver medalist in the 110-meter hurdles, gold medalist in the event at the 2011 world championships, took to Twitter earlier this week to tell a story about how, when he was 17, he was stopped by police and given a traffic ticket.

Richardson posted: “Only after closing the truck did I realize the officer was standing at his door, hand on gun …” And: DON’T tell me what to wear, how to speak, or what to do until something like this happens to you.”

And this:

https://twitter.com/JaiRich/status/750930222111797249

The next day, Thursday, he posted a follow-up:

https://twitter.com/JaiRich/status/751081933535227904

Like Trotter, Sanya Richards-Ross, the London 2012 400 gold medalist (five medals in all over three Games, four gold), saw her competitive career come here to an end. Battling injury, she started but could not finish the first round in the 400.

She has already made the smooth transition to broadcasting. On Instagram this week, she posted this:

More violence will not bring the resolution we need....The pain and hurt in our community is real, we are all affected by each other's actions. It's time that we love each other better, have greater empathy and compassion. I've never felt this kind of helplessness.... Condolences and prayers for the families that lost love ones tonight. We are better than this!!!! #LordHelpUs 💔🙏🏾

A photo posted by Sanya Richards-Ross (@sanyarichiross) on Jul 7, 2016 at 11:27pm PDT

The flag fluttered softly in the breeze Saturday at Hayward.

Before the Olympic Games in Rio comes the Republican convention, the week of July 18 in Cleveland, and the Democratic convention, the week of July 25 in Philadelphia.

We all — athletes and the rest of us — have the chance to speak up.

Just as Robert F. Kennedy did on April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, upon learning of the death of Martin Luther King Jr. Here is what the senator said, just two months before he himself would be killed by gun violence:

“Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love, and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, this difficult time for the United States, it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are, and what direction we want to move in.

“For those of you who are black — considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible — you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.

“We can move in that direction as a country and greater polarization, black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another.

“Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, [with] compassion and love. He died in the cause of that effort.

“What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.

“So I shall ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King, that’s true, but more importantly, to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love — a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.

“We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We’ve had difficult times in the past but we — and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it’s not the end of disorder; it’s perhaps well to ask what kind of nation we are.

“But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.

“Dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world," a reference indeed to the Olympic ideal.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to that," Senator Kennedy said in conclusion, "and say a prayer for our country and our people.”

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.”

Justin Gatlin: flag-bearing ray of sunshine?

EUGENE, Oregon — The weather forecast Sunday for the cathedral that is Hayward Field promised patches of sunshine. So apt. The U.S. team now heading to Beijing for the August world championships could be, may well be, the best-ever. Don’t say 30 medals. But, you know.

At the same time, can this team, this sport run away from the storm clouds? Say Justin Gatlin. Say Galen Rupp. You know.

Gatlin, who hasn’t lost at the 100 or 200 meters since 2013, ran away with the 200 Sunday at the U.S. nationals, ripping off a 19.57. That was a new U.S. outdoor national championships record. It made for the fifth-fastest 200 ever.

Gatlin’s performance highlighted a meet at which the U.S. team served notice of depth across the board. When Allyson Felix wins a 400 in which Sanya Richards-Ross doesn’t even make the final and Francena McCorory takes fourth — that’s evidence of how good the Americans are, and that’s just one event.

The list of potential multiple medal events is long. Just for starters: men’s shot put, men’s and women’s sprints, men’s and women’s sprint hurdles, men's triple jump (four qualifiers, all from the same university -- Florida, go Gator fans).

The U.S. women are really good in the 800 — Alysia Montaño winning Sunday in 1:59.15, Brenda Martinez just back in 1:59.71, Ajee' Wilson coming in third in 2:00.05 on one shoe. Maggie Vessey fell and didn’t have a chance.

At last year’s championships in Sacramento, Montaño was heavily pregnant with her first child, a daughter, Linnea, born last Aug. 15. You want sunshine?

As the U.S. team proved in the Bahamas this past May, it now has the recipe, assuming of course no baton drops, to beat Usain Bolt and the Jamaicans in the men’s 4x100 relay.

The key is getting way ahead of Bolt by the anchor leg. It’s simple: Gatlin, who runs one of the middle legs.

Take it to the bank: head to head, Gatlin, right now, absolutely would beat Bolt at both marquee distances, 100 or 200, and it might not even be close. Line them up: Gatlin is your guy. Bolt’s 2015 best in the 200, just as a for instance, is 20.13 in the Czech Republic on May 26.

So: how is Gatlin, age 33, 11 years after winning the 100 at the Athens Olympics, running better and faster than ever? More to the point: is Gatlin running clean? Better question: what if, truly, he is?

Questions, questions, questions all meet long for Rupp. There were British reporters here for the duration, and not for the Oregon sunshine.

Rupp, and his coach, Alberto Salazar, have been at the center of doping-related allegations for the past several weeks. All smoke, no fire. But a lot of smoke. Like, a lot.

Rupp is the London 2012 silver medalist in the 10,000 meters — behind his Oregon Project teammate, the British runner Mo Farah, who in recent days has been facing the same sorts of questions. Here on Friday, Rupp won the 10k and on Sunday took third in the 5k. Rupp also put on a bravo performance for the media after that 10k, scrupulously sticking to talking points, and talking points only — oh, and was that his agent, and Bolt’s as well, Ricky Simms, right there?

“I believe in a clean sport,” Rupp said, time and again. “I’m not going to lie. It’s been hard,” he said, over and again. And so on.

As was observed in the press tribunes at Hayward — so curious that Bolt did not run this week in Jamaica. Maybe Simms had more pressing business in Eugene.

Earlier this month, ProPublica and the BBC published allegations by, among others, the U.S. distance runner Kara Goucher and a former Salazar assistant, Steve Magness, that Salazar encouraged elite runners at the Oregon Project, which he leads, to push if not skirt anti-doping rules.

On Wednesday, just before the start of the meet here, Salazar published a 12,000-word online manifesto disputing the allegations. The Oregon Project, he said, “will never permit doping.”

A significant chunk of those 12,000 words went toward Salazar’s relationship with Goucher.

On Sunday, after her 5k-race, in which she finished 18th, Goucher said she doesn’t like “being labeled a liar.” At the same time, she asserted her “love for the sport is much stronger than my passion to have people like me.”

She said she first met with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency on Feb. 1 or 2, 2013. Why that hadn’t emerged until now, she said, will all come out in due time.

“I believe in the truth,” she also said, “and I know that these things take time. I believe USADA is doing everything in their power. Think of how long it too for Lance,” a reference to the cyclist Lance Armstrong, “and I believe the truth will come out.

“When, I don’t know.”

Gatlin, meanwhile, who is often labeled a two-time doping loser, tried something of a media reach-out strategy here, talking to Reuters and to Sports Illustrated in a bid to get ahead of what he and everyone in the sport knows is going to be the other major U.S. track storyline come August and Beijing.

This is how it’s going to be: Tyson Gay, who served a one-year ban, won the 100 here on Friday, in 9.87 — his first world championship slot since 2009.

This is also how it’s going to be, absent injury or something freaky:

This year, Gatlin has run 9.75 and a world-best 9.74 in the 100. The sprints historically have been the domain of the Americans. Yet Gatlin would be the first American to get back on top of the world-scene sprint podium since 2007 — since Gay won the 100 and 200 at the worlds in Osaka, Japan.

It's all been Boltus Interruptus since, if you will, albeit with that 2011 worlds 100 false-start hiccup for Yohan Blake.

Bolt’s best 2015 100 is a 10.12, in April — though he did run a fantastic anchor leg at the World Relays.

Maybe the yams in Jamaica will prove super-potent this summer, or something.

Otherwise, this is a pretty easy call.

On Sunday, after winning the 200, referring to that Bolt-led Jamaican sprint domination of the past few years, Gatlin said, “I think a lot of sprinters are waking up and understanding that, you know, it’s time to fight back. It’s time to be able to represent your country. It’s time to work hard and go out there and bear your American flag with honor.”

Is the world, captivated by Bolt since 2008, ready for Gatlin to rule the sprints in Beijing? At the very Bird’s Nest where Bolt became, well, Bolt?

“You know what? I don’t know. At this point in time, all I can worry about is myself. That’s all I can do. I can only wake up as Justin Gatlin and go to sleep as Justin Gatlin.”

Earlier in the meet, Gatlin had suggested to Reuters that his first doping matter — when he tested positive in 2001 for an attention-deficit disorder medication — doesn’t deserve, really, to be counted.

“Last time I checked, someone who takes medication for a disorder is not a doper,” he said.

“Other people in the sport have taken the same medication I had for ADD and only got warnings.

“I didn’t,” a two-year ban that was later cut to one.

Gatlin’s second go-around with the doping rules has proven far more problematic.

In 2006, Gatlin tested positive for testosterone. He has consistently maintained he was sabotaged by a massage therapist with a grudge against his former coach, Trevor Graham; the therapist is alleged to have rubbed testosterone cream onto Gatlin at the 2006 Kansas Relays.

Query: does that pass the my-dog-ate-the-homework test?

Gatlin got four years.

He was eligible for eight but argued, successfully, that the ADD strike shouldn’t count against him in aggravation.

So — to his position.

Gatlin told SI, “That makes me a two-time doper? I don’t understand that at all,” and the man has a genuine point.

The hangup for many is the sabotage story. Maybe it's true. Maybe it's not. Without more in the public domain, who can say?

In the end, the thing is, Gatlin has done his time. The rules say he can run. What more, now, should the guy do?

If he were to get caught again, surely Gatlin -- who is a smart guy and has been around -- knows the consequences. It'd be over and done, however many prior strikes he wants to count. Is that risk worth whatever reward?

How about this: if this were the NFL, would this be such a big deal? Don't those guys get busted all the time, and it's small-point news in the back of the newspaper? Why is it seemingly such a bigger deal in track and field?

All of you who now want to stand up and scream, lifetime ban for even a first offense! Go away. That's not feasible, because of right-to-work and other legitimate concerns. If you want to mutter and sputter about such things over a pint in a pub, fine. The rest of us are going to live in the real world.

So what is it? Is track the last refuge of moralists? Come on. The world is not black and white. It's full of shades of grey. Elite track and field is, in every way, big-time, professional sport. So are sprinters supposed to be held to a different standard than linebackers? Really? Why?

So what is it?

Is it that, at 33, Gatlin is running so damn fast?

What explains that?

His 2004 best in the 100 was 9.85. Now he’s a full tenth of a second faster, and every sign is — aiming toward August — he probably will go faster still.

Until Sunday, Gatlin had a 2015 world-leading 19.68 in the 200 — here at Hayward, at the Prefontaine Classic, on May 30.

He ran a 19.92 in the first round, then 19.9 flat in the semis, then that 19.57.

His 200 times were all in the 20s until last year, when he posted 19.68 in Monaco.

The testing system is too fraught with uncertainty to declare that Gatlin — or, for that matter, anyone — is 100 percent clean.

For instance, and without reference to Gatlin — or, again, anyone — the British newspaper the Daily Mail on Sunday, quoting the American Victor Conte, the doping expert at the center of the BALCO scandal who now is in the supplement business, explained in lay terms the art of using a slow-acting substance called IGF-1 LR3.

Total cost for a 40-day cycle: as little as $200. Use: 100 micrograms per day.

“I believe there is rampant use of it right now,” Conte told the paper.

Then again, it is also the case that Gatlin is 25 pounds lighter than he was in 2010. What sport scientists have discovered is that upper body weight is, literally and figuratively, a drag for sprinters. Be as scrawny as you want up top. Just be able to pound it, and hard, with your lower body, because that’s what exerts mass and force.

If you’re carrying 25 pounds less, it stands to reason that you might well run faster, right?

Even a lot faster.

What if, for the sake of argument, Justin Gatlin is indeed running clean? What then?

“When you come out to Hayward Field,” Gatlin said atop the medals stand, “you have to come out and make a statement.”

“Look out, Jamaica?” Dan O’Brien, the 1996 Olympic decathlon champ who was doing PA duties at Hayward.

“Look out world,” Gatlin said. “Here we are — USA!”

Hey, maybe USATF is building something big!

NASSAU, Bahamas — At a team meeting Friday night, before this second edition of the IAAF World Relays got underway, Dennis Mitchell, one of the American team coaches, urged the U.S. runners to consider that each of them was a hammer and this, these Relays, was a construction project. Use your hammer, he said. Build something big. That they did.

The U.S. team dominated these Relays, winning all but three events.

On Sunday:

— the women’s 4x8 team won in 8:00.62, a national record and the fastest time in the world in 22 years;

— the women’s 4x4 killed it in a championship-record 3:19.39, with Sanya Richards-Ross running her leg, the third, in 48.79, looking maybe even better than she did in her Olympic-gold year;

— the men’s distance-medley team beat back the Kenyans, winning in a world-record 9:15.5 (it’s a new event);

— the men’s 4x4 team, just like last year, disappointed the home crowd by turning back the Golden Knights of the Bahamas, crossing the line in 2:58.43.

All that followed Saturday’s performance, in which the U.S. men won the 4x1, taking down Usain Bolt and the Jamaicans; the U.S. men won the 4x8, beating the Kenyans; and, of course, the U.S. women set a world record in the (once more, the new event of the) distance medley relay, 10:36.5.

Saturday would have been a perfect 4-for-4 if the U.S. women had won the 4x2. They were way ahead when Jeneba Tarmoh and Allyson Felix could not complete the final pass and tumbled to the track; Nigeria ended up winning, in 1:30.52.

On Sunday, the U.S. men’s 4x2 team was DQ’d when Isiah Young and Curtis Mitchell, Man 2 to 3, botched their pass, and the blue baton went skittering to the track and rolled two lanes over.

For the record:

Of the last 11 championships dating back to 2003, world or Olympic, including these Relays, the U.S. men’s 4x1 or 4x2 relay team has been DQ’d or DNF’d eight times — again, eight out of 11.

It’s nine of 12 if you include the retroactive doping DQ for the 2001 4x1 team.

The two bad relay passes aside, a longstanding problem, obviously — could it be that, big-picture, USA Track & Field has its stuff together not just financially but on the track, and in two ways?

One, the decision to send an A-team here to the Bahamas, where it matters to matter?

For those who might say that Kyle Merber, Bryce Spratling, Brandon Johnson and Ben Blankenship — who ran the 1200, 400, 800 and 1600 in the distance medley — aren’t exactly household names, there’s this: the U.S. is so deep, who says these guys aren’t the A team? Let’s see who makes it to Rio come Eugene in 2016.

Two, the on-track performance this early in the 2015 season — not just from the athletes but from the coaches and the behind-the-scenes support staff was, clearly, world class.

The storyline heading out of here is not just that the Americans are good.

It’s that the Americans are, on the track, badass.

So what are the Jamaicans, in particular, going to do about it? The Jamaicans spent a lot of time off the track doing a lot of talking. And?

Yes, the Jamaicans won the 4x2. Awesome.

Also, the Jamaican women, with Veronica Campbell-Brown anchoring, took down Carmelita Jeter and the Americans in the 4x1. The winning time: 42.14. The U.S. women in second: 42.32.

This is all great stuff for track and field. The sport needs rivalry. Now it has one, and it has characters to fulfill that rivalry, all the way through the world championships in late August in Beijing.

Because let’s be real — this first day of the Relays got all of one paragraph in the New York Times, and filed by the Associated Press, at that. To be taken seriously, and on a day when Mayweather-Pacquiao, the Kentucky Derby, the NBA and NHL playoffs and even more crowded for space on the sports calendar, track and field needs to be noticed.

If it was an interesting choice of sportsmanship, to say the least, for Ryan Bailey to have gone all Bolt lightning-pose and then throat-slash at the end of the 4x1 Saturday night, well, what’s done is done.

Remember, it was Bolt who called out Justin Gatlin in particular at the news conference the day before these Relays, suggesting that Gatlin had a penchant for doing a lot of talking but not saying a lot. And it was Bolt, a well-known advocate of lifetime bans for doping cheats, who about 10 days ago said that in his opinion the reduced one-year sanction Tyson Gay received in 2013 for a doping offense — after cooperating with authorities — was “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

Bolt also said in that report, “I feel like he let me down, and he let the sport down.”

At a late-night news conference Saturday, Gay — with Bolt listening — said, among other things, “I ask for forgiveness for a mistake.”

Bolt was in no mood Saturday for lightheartedness. He spent most of the news conference with his arms and legs crossed, his body language signaling that while the Americans might have won this round, there is more to come.

Indeed, the stats showed that while Bailey ran an 8.83 anchor, Bolt — who is still far from in top shape — ran an 8.65.

If those times seem like freak-of-nature times for both, there’s this: the batons at these Relays had transponders in them.

The precision for which that allows may be such that all of us have to recalibrate the way we think of relay splits going forward.

A focused, determined Bolt can only be good for track and field.

Plus, a Bolt who has the support of his team — all the better.

This from Warren Weir on Twitter:

You don't ever dis a legend even if yal are rivals it's like you're a nobody celebrating on Ronaldinho you look stupid.

— Warren Weir (@Warren_Weir) May 3, 2015

  Followed by this:

@RBailey_sprints pic.twitter.com/4YMEI8LYYq

— Warren Weir (@Warren_Weir) May 3, 2015

Also, this from Asafa Powell on Twitter:

#TeamJamaica >RT @daveed98: Ryan Bailey is a meek man, remember no @YohanBlake no @officialasafa will will ... http://t.co/W3Ng9BW4Fr — Asafa Powell (@officialasafa) May 3, 2015

Ah, Powell.

In a world in which you’re going to argue that a doping offense deserves a lifetime ban, where does Powell fall? His 18-month ban for oxilofrine in a supplement called Epiphany D1 was cut to six, and he returned to action last year; this weekend, he ran at a meet in Guadalupe, running a windy 10.08 in the 100.

Theory in dealing with doping stuff is one thing. Dealing with real-world problems on the track is another.

The Jamaicans have to confront a challenge with the U.S. men’s 4x1 relay, and surely they know it.

Bolt is the fastest man in history in the 100, at 9.58.

But Gay is tied for second-fastest, at 9.69, and Gatlin is fifth-fastest, at 9.77. Mike Rodgers, who ran the lead-off leg Saturday, is in a three-way tie for the 12th-fastest 100 of all-time, at 9.85.

The strategy is clearly this: give Bailey a big-enough lead so that not even Bolt can catch up.

What are the Jamaicans to do? They are now playing catch-up. Who are they going to counter with?

Blake has also run a 9.69. Powell has a 9.72 and a 9.74, but those times were seven and eight years ago, respectively.

If the Jamaicans keep Nesta Carter in the lead, and then — to counter Gatlin and Gay in positions two and three — run Bolt and Blake in their two and three spots, who would run anchor? Weir?

Given a chance to run Bolt Sunday night in the anchor slot against Gatlin in the 4x2, the Jamaicans put in Weir. Bolt did not run at all on Sunday.

There are lots and lots of reasons why that could, and plausibly should, be the case.

There’s this, though — for track and field to be the real deal again, it needs its biggest stars to run against its each other, and as much as possible.

What the U.S. men’s 4x2 DQ Sunday obscured is this: Gatlin got the stick in seventh. He finished in third.

Oh, to have seen Gatlin run clean against Weir, right? Or … Bolt.

The championships in Bejing go down in late August.

Let’s get it on.

Bolt gets crowd love, a dose of U.S. "respect"

NASSAU, Bahamas — It’s better, as the saying goes, in the Bahamas. They held the first edition of the IAAF World Relays here last year, to resounding success, such success that they resolved to do it all over again. They needed just one more thing, really, to make the show even bigger and better, the biggest star of them all, the guy who is, more or less track and field in these first years of the 21st century, and when Usain Bolt took the baton and kicked it into gear on the blue Mondo track, you would have thought Thomas A. Robinson Stadium was going to lift off into the moonlit sky.

“Success is a powerful magnet,” Lamine Diack, the president of the IAAF, track and field’s international governing body, had said Friday, at a news conference, adding that officials were “therefore delighted” that Bolt was on hand for this second edition of the Relays.

Make no mistake — Bolt’s appearance this year is testament not only to his desire to gear up for the world championships in August in Beijing but, as well, to last year’s demonstrated success of the Relays and the word-of-mouth on the circuit of how much fun the event is for all involved.

When the junkanoo band is rocking, as it was for the men’s 4x800, and it’s the last lap and Robbie Andrews of the United States is kicking like his hair is on fire, and he crosses the line in a competition-record 7:04.84, pointing the baton in victory at his teammates, and fireworks go off — this is what track and field not only should be, but could be, all the time.

Same just a few minutes later when the U.S. women — with but one Olympic champion in the event, Sanya Richards-Ross, the 400-meter specialist — blows away the field to set a new world record, 10:36.5, in the distance medley, which goes 1200, 400, 800, 1600. The other three: Treniere Moser, Ajee Wilson, Shannon Rowbury.

Even the losers — well, the non-winners — almost always have a great time at the Relays. The Canadian men’s 4x100 team was disqualified for the tiny matter of not having the baton that they give you at the beginning of the race and insist you have at the end. Said anchorman Justyn Warner: “I didn’t have a stick with me. It stayed somewhere in the beginning of the race. I just ran for fun. It is a great meet!”

Remember, that’s almost always. On the final handoff of what looked like a sure U.S. win in the women’s 4x2, Jeneba Tarmoh and Felix could not execute and both tumbled to the track. Nigeria won, in 1:30.52.

For those keeping score: that’s 2-for-2 for the U.S. women in botched exchanges at the World Relays, one this year and one in 2014. Last year, Katie Mackey fell down after a collision with the Australians.

More scoreboard: of 11 major championships dating to the Paris 2003 worlds, the U.S. woman have had relay screw-ups in five. Add in the retroactive doping DQ from Edmonton 2001, and it’s six of 12. That’s not good math.

Back to the positive: these Relays provide evidence of how a win-win can work all around.

For track and field, it’s evidence of how innovation can spin the sport forward. The IAAF took a chance in adding an event to the calendar — amid grumbling that it was too early in the year, that a relay-only event was too novel, that overall it came with too many risks.

“This is an event on which we took a chance,” Frankie Fredericks, the great 1990s sprinter from the west African nation of Namibia who is now a member of both the policy-making IAAF council and the International Olympic Committee. “We need to take more chances in our sport.”

Credit Diack, in particular, with pushing ahead.

He said the Relays make for “the latest example of [track and field’s] continued evolution as a sport.”

Last year’s meet saw three world records and 37 national marks. The Jamaican 4x200 team, with Yohan Blake anchoring, lowered the world record to 1:18.63, taking five-hundredths off a mark that had stood for 20 years — by a Santa Monica Track Club team anchored by none other than Carl Lewis.

Blake is not here this year. Bolt is.

The pre-meet news conference Friday — spurred by last year’s success perhaps, maybe by the draw of Bolt — drew double the reporters it saw last year.

For the government and businesses of the Bahamas, meanwhile, the Relays are pure gold.

Last year, the Robinson track had to be resurfaced and various other capital improvements had to be made, Lionel Haven, the managing director of the local organizing committee said. All told, investment totaled $9 million. Balanced against that: a survey done after the meet by a Canadian firm totaled positive economic impact at $26 million.

That is pretty easy math.

Last year, Haven said, was a “unique year,” because of the various start-up investments — which, obviously won’t be required this time around.

You can almost hear the cash registers cha-chinging around Nassau.

At the same time, too much of a good thing is, well, too much. So the third edition of the Relays won’t go down until 2017, again back here in Nassau.

“It’s going to become even better,” year by year, Fredericks said, adding, “Now people realize this is serious.”

And, at the same time, serious fun — the very thing track and field needs.

As Bolt said Friday, “Any time I compete in the Caribbean, I get so much love.”

He made his first on-track appearance, for the first heats of the men’s 4x1, at 7:37 p.m.

The crowd, sensing a disturbance in the force, went nuts.

Ever the showman, Bolt played to the audience, walking up and down the backstretch, waving a little bit, before taking up his position at the top of the stretch in Lane 8. When the camera showed him on the big screen, he smiled a big smile and blew a kiss. That drew a big roar.

The locals saved a bigger roar for the Bahamas team, which by unfortunate luck drew Heat 1, against the Jamaicans.

Alfred Higgs of the Bahamas, a 23-year-old who three years ago ran a personal-best 10.4 in the 100, can one day tell his grandchildren he ran against Bolt.

As they lined it up, and Bolt was blowing them that big kiss, the crowd yelled, “242!” — the area code for the Bahamas, showing some local love. Bingo the Potcake dog, the 2015 Relays mascot, sporting a “242” headband, shook it down.

Alas for the men from the Bahamas, they finished sixth in a field of seven, in 39.32, and would not qualify for the finals.

Bolt had an easy jog across the line in first, the Jamaicans finishing a world-leading 38.07.

In the third of the three heats, the Americans — with Mike Rodgers running the first leg, Justin Gatlin the second, Tyson Gay the third, something of a three-way doping redemption tour in under 40 seconds — took back the world lead, in 37.87, Ryan Bailey (no doping issues) way ahead by the time he got the baton for the anchor leg.

This proved a marked improvement over 2014, when the U.S. 4x1 team had been disqualified in the heats, the result of a bad pass, Trell Kimmons to Rakieem Salaam, Man 2 to 3 on the backstretch.

The final saw the same four Americans in Lane 5.

The Jamaicans — the same four as well, Nesta Carter, Kemar Bailey-Cole, Nickel Ashmeade, Bolt — lined up in Lane 4.

As the gun went off, Bolt waited, hands on his hips. The noise in the stadium: 242-style loud.

At 300, he settled into position.

He never had a chance.

Rodgers to Gatlin to Gay had put Bailey in such a commanding lead — through 300, the U.S. was at 28.55 — and then Bailey ripped off an 8.83-second finishing leg. The batons this year have transponders in them so the timing is incredibly precise.

The Americans won in 37.38, Bolt — who, incredibly, was gaining on Bailey — and Jamaicans second in 37.68.

Candidly, both teams executed below-average passes as the stick went around the track. But there were no drops.

Who, meanwhile, was that at the finish line doing a brief exposition of the famed “lightning Bolt” phase? Could that have been Bailey? And was that, at the end, the briefest turn into a throat slash?

“It felt great,” Bailey said.

“I mean, victory always feels good,” Gay said.

Gatlin, whom Bolt had singled out before the race for talking, and a lot, spoke afterward only of how the Americans and Jamaicans had mutual “respect.”

That was for public consumption, of course.

Here was Bolt: “It’s not the first time I’ve come second.”

Here was the real tell: in the news conference, as he listened to questions and answers, Bolt’s body language said more than any words. His arms and legs were crossed. He is angry, frustrated and determined.

That is all good stuff.

You think Saturday night was good for track and field?

It was great.

“All it says,” Bolt said when asked what second-place here means, “is we need to go back to the drawing board.

“All it says is we are excited for the showdown in Berlin.” He quickly realized his mistake and threw his hands above his head. “Beijing, sorry.”

USATF voices: a call for passion, civility and common sense

Eight years. That’s what Jon Drummond got Wednesday for multiple doping violations. Where are the howls now — and where have they been, because everyone had to know something of this magnitude was coming — from the athletes who filled the room just two weeks ago in Anaheim, California, at the annual USA Track & Field athletes advisory committee meeting, where Drummond was improbably still the chair of that very committee? There’s been silence, mostly, and that is just incredible. No, not incredible. Wrong. Where is the outspoken condemnation? For real? Where is it? Contrast that with the criticism and anger that emerged from some, if not many, at the end of that very same USATF convention. The USATF board voted to put forward federation chairperson Stephanie Hightower for the IAAF council slot at elections next year despite a floor vote for Bob Hersh. This produced raw emotion. Why? Sexism? Racism? Petty personality politics? Some combination of all three? Or something altogether else? The intensity is all the more mystifying given USATF’s fantastic financial performance and the wholesale changes underway at the IAAF level.

Big picture:

USATF, after years of putting the fun in dysfunctional, finally appears to be on the right track under the leadership of Hightower and chief executive Max Siegel.

For some — if not many — in track and field and the broader Olympic scene, that is a hard sentence with which to come to grips.

The evidence is right there, though, plain as day, and the critics have better start dealing with it.

Now.

Because the change is here, now in the United States, and it’s coming internationally, and the opportunity is there for USATF, Hightower and Siegel — repeat, USATF, Hightower and Siegel — to play a hugely significant role in the coming years in the governance of international track and field.

There’s room for everybody who cares about the sport, who loves it, to have an opinion. No problem there.

But here is a call for the discussion to be ramped down to levels of civility and tolerance.

This reminder: the Olympic values, in shorthand, call for excellence, friendship and respect.

Consider:

Distance standout Lauren Fleshman’s website proclaims, “Dwell in positivity — it’s worth the effort!” She is now the mother of an 18-month-old. Would language like this be acceptable at any Mommy and Me class — Fleshman writing at that very same website, recapping the annual meeting: “I don’t know enough about Stephanie Hightower to know if she would be good at the job or not, or better than Bob, etc. But I do know that at this meeting she was full of s***, so that’s not a good start.”

Here is a quote published at Flotrack from USATF activist Becca Gillespy Peter, who also attended the annual meeting:

“Bob is the most upstanding person ever, and what kills me is that he’s not an ass-kisser like Stephanie and he doesn’t play these political games, I mean obviously he knows politics, but a lot of this stuff with USATF is just beneath him. It’s not his style to go on the offensive against something like this.”

The Orange County Register ran a column that said Hightower’s “lack of professionalism and questionable ethics have long been evident,” going back to long-distance telephone calls made in 1992 (22 years ago, come on, really, and more to the point, as the Register noted, the state agreed not to seek repayment). The paper also chose to note that the Columbus, Ohio, school district — she lives there — enrolled Hightower’s child at a sought-after school even though she had not filed the proper paperwork, citing the Columbus Dispatch.

Let’s pause for a moment.

All public figures know that criticism goes with the territory. But making a professional matter personal — by bringing up family business, working in the child and the school, and relying on another newspaper to do it? To allegedly prove favoritism? Isn’t that something of a stretch to insinuate that’s the smoking gun that gets her but good when it comes to that proposition about professionalism and ethics?

To reiterate, everyone with an interest in track and field and in USATF ought to dial down the rhetoric from an 11 — using the Spinal Tap scale — to, say, an eight. Disagreement is fine. Cable-channel nasty name-calling is not. It needs to stop. Moreover, the snark needs to stop, or at least be toned way down. If you think you're the smartest person in the room, or on the message board -- you're not, guaranteed.

Now: who legitimately thinks anyone gets to be the senior vice president of a major international sports federation without playing politics?

Let’s not be naive, people.

There is little question Hersh is the senior IAAF vice president right now because Britain’s Sebastian Coe and Ukraine’s Sergey Bubka, who are also vice presidents, are going to run for the presidency next August, and Hersh was — in 2011 — the very excellent compromise candidate for the No. 2 spot.

All of you who would profess to be so in the know about the IAAF and its ways, and whether Hersh has wielded magic for the United States over the years: if you, like me, were in Daegu, South Korea, for the 2011 elections, let’s reminisce together about that weird technical glitch in the electronic voting system that almost cost Bubka his vp slot.

All right, then.

I have covered the Olympic movement since 1998. Hersh has been on the IAAF council since 1999.

Hersh is now 74 years old, turning 75 next Feb. 12. Lamine Diack, the outgoing IAAF president, is 81. If Hersh were to see four more years, he’d turn 79 before the end of his term.

Coe is 58. Bubka is 51. Hightower is 56. They are all contemporaries, elite athletes from the 1980s (and in Bubka’s case, ‘90s) who are now in their prime as executives.

If, like me, you attended the International Olympic Committee’s 5th World Conference on Women and Sport in Los Angeles in 2012, you would understand the movement is actively looking to bring more women, and in particular women of diverse backgrounds, into positions of management and leadership.

See Stephanie Hightower.

If, like me, you also attended the USATF meeting in Anaheim, all you had to do was sit down at that AAC meeting and listen to Siegel for this reality check:

USATF revenue up 79 percent from 2011 to 2014, from $19 million to $34 million. Assets up 472 percent from $3.6 million in 2011 to $17 million by the end of 2014. And more — including a raft of new sponsors, and palpable energy driven by the long-term Nike deal.

“I am just really excited with the progress of our organization since Max has been at the helm,” Olympic 400-meter gold medalist Sanya Richards Ross said upon walking out of the room that afternoon. “I am excited about the transparency and his accountability to the athletes and I am very optimistic for our future.”

Why would this be? Because, in large measure, USATF is following the exact same model as the USOC — the board chair, Hightower, has empowered the CEO, Siegel, to do his job, just the same way board chair Larry Probst has given chief executive Scott Blackmun the authority to run the USOC.

Now — does USATF still have some governance rough patches to address, which the USOC has reminded it of? Absolutely. Are things perfect? Hardly.

At any rate: it’s against the backdrop of a hugely upward and optimistic trend that the next shoe dropped, the 392-70 vote as the annual meeting was coming to a close recommending Hersh for the IAAF slot. The USATF board then heard from both candidates, Hersh and Hightower, and voted, 11-1, for Hightower.

Here is the thing, and this is what seems so problematic for some: that 392-70 vote was a recommendation.

This reminder: unless you live in Vermont, where town hall meetings are the thing, we do not live in a straight-up democracy. We live in a representative democracy. Votes of more than 400 people can far too often slide into a high school-like popularity contest, or something similarly meaningless.

The USOC’s downfall some 12 years ago was that it had a cumbersome board of more than 120 people, its decisions racked by petty, personal politics. Sound familiar? Now the USOC board is down to 15, and it works.

In his appearance before the USATF board, Hersh absolutely had a chance to make his case. To put it another way: he got to compete.

So did Hightower. She got to make her case, too.

Hersh lost. Hightower won.

This happens in sports, and it happens in sports politics.

USATF had a process in place. The process was duly followed.

The time for whining about it, friends, is over. It’s time to move on. There are far more important issues with which to contend — like why the best track and field athletes in the United States did not rise up and ask that Jon Drummond be immediately provisionally suspended as chair of the AAC as soon as it was apparent that Drummond had been implicated in the Tyson Gay matter.

If Drummond had been exonerated, he could have had his position — or an even more promising future in USATF leadership — back.

Instead, he got eight years. From the decision: “A coach must be a watchdog when it comes to prohibited substances.” From Siegel: "We are all deeply disappointed."

Where, now, are the voices — especially those who were in that room in Anaheim two weeks ago — who will rise up in defense of their peers, the clean athletes who in roughly 20 months will put on the red, white and blue and compete in Rio de Janeiro for the United States at the 2016 Summer Games?

You want something to be passionate about? Be passionate about that.

Relay oops -- U.S. does it again, twice

NASSAU, Bahamas — A Bahamian Junkanoo band rocked and rolled in the end zone. The crowd went jetplane-loud when the local heroes, the Bahamas men’s 4x400 team, went around the track. Two world records went down in about 30 minutes. It was a great night for track and field at the first edition of the IAAF World Relays.

It was also a rough night for the U.S. team, one that ought to raise, yet again, the same tiresome, frustrating questions:

How can Americans be so good at thumbs on a cellphone but manage to be so bad at passing a stick around the track in a relay? Just to pick one team, how can the Jamaicans manage to, you know, get around the track so well and so fast?

There were, to be sure, bright spots for the United States:

The U.S. women won the 4x100 in 41.88 seconds. Sanya Richards-Ross, in a return to the bright lights of track and field after medical woes with her toes, ran a devastating second lap in the heats of the 4x400, opening up a 1.4-second lead on the Jamaicans, to power the U.S. women to victory in their heat. In the men’s 4x400 heats, London 2012 triple jump champion Christian Taylor ran a fantastic anchor leg to hold off Jamaica’s Rusheen McDonald by eight-hundredths of a second.

Yet in a bewildering case of déjà vu all over again, and again, in incidents that awakened the echoes of bungled handoffs and bad passes past, the U.S. team managed not once but twice to screw it up, first in the women’s 4x1500 relay — which seems almost unimaginable — and then in the men’s 4x200.

In the women’s 4x1500, the Kenyans took down the world record by more than 30 seconds. That’s a wow.

The mark had been 17:05.72, set just a few days ago in Nairobi. Everyone knew coming in that the record was soft, and anticipation was high for a duel between the Kenyans and Americans.

Indeed, Heather Kampf, who would run first for the United States, sent out a tweet before the race that said, “Running with a baton is like carrying around the hearts of your teammates while racing. Can’t wait!”

It all seemed to be going so well. And then — boom, Katie Mackey, running the second leg, was on the ground.

“I just did what we did in practice,” Mackey said afterward. “Looked back at Heather,” who was coming in for the pass, “and moved up a little bit to the inside, and next thing I know — the Australian is right in front of me, so I kind of tripped and went down.

“But my first thought was, it is track, anything can happen, you have to get up and try to get back into the race. I think I did it. We love the Bahamas!”

The trip-and-fall cost Mackey at least four seconds. Four seconds meant 25 meters, at least. There went the duel.

The Kenyans crushed the field — by the end, Helen Obiri would lap Romania’s Lenuta Ptronela Simiuc — and the world record, finishing in 16:33.58.

The Americans got up and back into it, beating the old record, too, finishing in an American-record 16.55.33.

“We felt the music throughout the race,” from the marching band, “and we felt the support of the crowd,” Obiri said.

“We are excited to have broken the world record for the second time this year,” Mercy Cherono, who ran the opening leg, said. “I am so happy and proud for my team and the time we ran today. It was important to win for our country.”

About a half-hour later, up came the men’s 4x2. American Curtis Mitchell, passing to Ameer Webb, Man 2 to Man 3, couldn’t swing it cleanly. They wobbled together past the exchange zone and that was that.

Webb, Mitchell said afterward, “had a big stop,” adding, “We almost crashed. I was nearly over him. It was just poor execution.”

Not that it would have mattered much to the result — the Jamaicans, anchored by Yohan Blake, blazed to a world-record 1:18.63, breaking the old mark, set 20 years ago, in April 1994, by five-hundredths of a second.

Unofficially, Blake’s split, and this may be the best we are ever going to do in knowing what he ran on the blue track here: 19-flat. Keep in mind, too, that the 200 world record, held by Bolt, is 19.19, set at the 2009 Berlin world championships.

Of course, Blake had a flying start Saturday night and Bolt had to start from the blocks, so the two are a little bit apples and oranges.

The Jamaican 1:18.63 is particularly notable because it means Carl Lewis' name is now gone from another line in the record books. You can still find the Santa Monica Track Club on the line that says sprint medley, 1985, 3:10.76 -- Lewis led that one off.

It’s notable, too, because, of course, Usain Bolt did not race. He is not here. And, still, the Jamaicans killed it.

The Americans, scoreboard said, would have finished third.

So meaningless.

Saint Kitts and Nevis ended up taking second; France was elevated to third.

“It shows Jamaica’s depth in sprints is spectacular,” Nickel Ashmeade, who ran leadoff, said. “No offense to anyone but there is no one like Jamaica. We have depth all around and keep getting better all the time.”

Bolt has his “lightning” pose. Blake does a “beast” thing. He did the beast thing a lot after the race but tends to speak quietly.

He said, “We just worried about getting the stick around the track. We know we have the speed to take care of everything else.”

This is where the Jamaicans are so different than the Americans.

It’s all mindset.

The Jamaicans genuinely seem to be having fun when they are racing.

Why, in the relays, do the Americans too often seem to be running as if thinking too much? Like they are executing some middle-management strategy?

“We ended up changing the relay last-minute,” Maurice Mitchell, who ran the first leg, said. “But, you know, it is what it is.”

Why a last-minute change, he was asked? “I’m not really sure. It’s coach’s decision.”

Asked to elaborate, Mitchell said, “I’m not really, fully — really know about what was going on. I just tried to do my job on the first leg.”

All of this, the communication issues and confidence woes they can engender, are well-documented in the 2009 Project 30 report — turn to Page 20.

In anticipation of just this sort of thing happening again, however, a few intrepid journalists on Friday did some math:

Since 2001, there have been 10 major championships — Olympics or worlds. The U.S. 4x1 men, as a for instance, have been DQ’d or DNF’d in five. One was for retroactive doping, 2001, so if you want to be picky, the number of field-of-play disasters is four of 10.

Listen to the way the Jamaicans and Americans talked Saturday night, after they had run, about the way each prepared for their races:

Warren Weir, second leg, Jamaican 4x2, half-jokingly: “We stayed home, ate ice cream and played video games.” Then, for real: “No, seriously, we all did our separate preparations because we are in different camps. We just did some baton exchanges on this track to test it out.”

Ashmeade: “We came out here yesterday and did a set of baton passes. That’s all.”

Now, Tianna Bartoletta, leadoff on the winning U.S. women’s 4x1 team:

“I would say we tried to really build trust among one another and communication because there are a lot of different variables between practice and race day.

“We really worked on being loud with our communication, either saying, ‘Wait,’ or, ‘Go,’ or, ‘Stick,’ and being really consistent with that so that under any circumstance or any situation we could get the baton around the track.”

It worked for them, right?

Allyson Felix: "... right where I need to be"

EUGENE, Ore. -- The signs were there last month, when Allyson Felix blasted to a 10.92 to win a 100-meter Diamond League sprint in Doha, Qatar, defeating both the reigning Olympic champion, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and the 200-meter champ, Veronica Campbell-Brown, both Jamaicans. Here Friday, she had said, "I feel like I'm right on schedule, right where I need to be."

She showed up Saturday for her baby, the 200, in a black bodysuit that evoked comparisons to something Cathy Freeman might have worn back in the day. And then Allyson Felix went out and made everyone else in the field look slow, and in particular the 2011 world championship silver medalist, Carmelia Jeter.

Felix won in 22.23 seconds, just one-hundredth off the year's best time, run by LSU junior Kimberlyn Duncan at an NCAA regional meet last week.

Jeter, who has a personal best of 22.20 in the 200, a season's-best of 22.31, managed only 22.78. She finished fifth.

American Jeneba Tarmoh finished second in 22.61, Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria third in 22.63, and another American, Bianca Knight, fourth, in 22.64. The times don't tell the true story. If it's possible to jog to the line in a 200, Allyson Felix kinda sorta did.

An Allyson Felix who is right on schedule, right where she needs to be, means big things.

It's big for the United States track program. She could -- should? -- win four medals. Some number -- four? -- should be gold.

It's big for NBC. (Let's face facts.) The network needs to build story lines around all those nights of television programming. Allyson Felix is everything you'd want: she's well-spoken, and the camera loves following her around the track, even in a black bodysuit.

Plus, she's on a mission: she has done everything in the sport. Everything. Won it all, done it all.

Except -- except the one thing she has always wanted, Olympic gold in the 200.

Twice she has won Olympic silver in the 200, in 2004 and 2008, both times behind Campbell-Brown.

The issue on the table, as it has been for months, is what events Felix will run in London -- that is, besides the 200.

Start with the relays. Those are a given.

She has long said she wants to double up her individual events.

Last year, in Daegu, she ran the 200 and 400.

This year, could it be the 100 and the 200?

For starters, the 400 comes first in the Olympic program. It's way more taxing.

If the 400 came after the 200, Felix said here Friday, "it would be very, very easy," meaning she would for sure do a 200-400 double.

Complicating the decision, perhaps, is the resurgence of American Sanya Richards-Ross. Hurt in 2011, fully healthy now, Richards-Ross ran a world-best 49.39 here Saturday for the win, defeating Amantle Montsho of Botswana, the 2011 400 champ; it was Montsho who defeated Felix last year in Daegu by a mere three-hundredths of a second.

Montsho's winning 2011 Daegu time: 49.56.

The challenges in the 100 are who she's running against -- Jeter, Fraser-Pryce, Campbell-Brown -- and herself. "The start has always been my issue," she said, and in a race that quick, a bad start and it's all but over.

Felix had said Friday that both the 100 and 400 were "still on the table." She said she intends to run next week in New York and then sit down with her longtime coach, Bobby Kersee, to make a decision.

She left here Saturday feeling strong. "I feel," she said, "like I'm in a good place."

Sanya's Super déjà vu times two?

Four years ago, after David Tyree had somehow super-glued the football to his helmet and the New York Giants escaped with a crazy 17-14 victory over the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLII, it all seemed possible under the stadium tunnel that Arizona evening for Sanya Richards-Ross. Her husband, Aaron Ross, a Giants defensive back, was now and forever a Super Bowl champion.

And she was on her way to the 2008 Beijing Games, the IAAF's 2006 female world athlete of the year with an American-record 48.7 in her specialty, the 400-meters. Nine times in 2006 she ran under 50 seconds. That year she literally went undefeated.

Ross' Super Bowl ring had to be an omen, right? Surely she would now be an individual Olympic gold medalist herself?

Fate works in funny ways.

Sanya Richards-Ross is indeed an Olympic gold medalist. She would go on to win gold in the 4x400 relay in Beijing with a stirring anchor leg.

The thing is, she had already won Olympic gold in that same relay, in Athens in 2004.

In the open 400 in Athens, she was not favored to win, and didn't, coming in sixth.

In the open 400 in Beijing, she absolutely was favored to win but did not. She came in third. She went out of the blocks hard, too hard. She was overtaken down the stretch by both Christine Ohuruogu of Great Britain and Shericka Williams of Jamaica.

In 2009, however, at the world championships in Berlin, Sanya won the open 400 decisively, in 49 flat.

Again, though, fate works in funny ways.

This past summer, at the 2011 world championships in Daegu, South Korea, Sanya struggled to even make the 400 final. She was hurt. And there was a lot on her mind -- a lawsuit with a former agent, contract issues, distractions.

In that Daegu 400 final, Sanya finished seventh. Amantle Montsho of Botswana won the race, in 49.56; American Allyson Felix came in second, just three-hundredths of a second back in one of the most thrilling finishes of the 2011 championships.

Sanya came home in 51.32.

Underneath the tunnel that night in Korea, Sanya vowed 2012 would be different.

A couple days ago, running indoors at a little meet in Fayetteville, Ark., Sanya opened her season with a 23.18 in the 200 and a 51.45 in the 400. Both were world-leading times, though Vania Stambolova of Bulgaria would run a 51.26 three days later in Vienna in the 400.

It's not that important that Sanya's times are world-bests in January. Nobody's giving out Olympic medals in the dead of winter.

What's telling is that she's turning out fast times while bearing a heavy training load -- the same way swimmers like Michael Phelps or Ryan Lochte can win races in mid-winter even while churning out thousands of yards.

What's impressive, too, is that she decided to run in Fayetteville pretty much at the last minute. She hadn't done any real speed work and had, to tell the truth, been planning -- is still planning -- to run next Saturday in the Millrose Games in New York.

"To be ready to run that well, with the load I have right now in my training … is very exciting and it's how I hope to be able to model my entire season," Sanya said in a very quiet voice.

The reason Sanya was speaking so quietly was that she was in a hotel room in Indianapolis, and Ross -- that's what she calls her husband -- was taking a nap, resting a couple days before Super Bowl XLVI, and she didn't want to disturb him.

Ross has been a rock for Sanya, showing her -- yet again -- how to handle the ups and downs of being a professional athlete. This season, for instance, he was benched in Week Two after giving up two big pass plays to Danario Alexander of the St. Louis Rams. But with injuries to Terrell Thomas and Prince Amukamara, Ross got another chance to start. And he has been in the lineup since, opposite Corey Webster.

"It's funny," she said, speaking softly when asked to compare the experience four years ago with this year's Super Bowl week. "My hubby -- he is a man of few words. Nothing really gets to him. That is what I admire about him. He is always a happy camper.

"… That has helped me a lot this season. I am more emotional. I wear my heart more on my sleeve. He reminds me that is a business and that I shouldn't take things so personally. I shouldn't take these things to heart. That has helped me tremendously -- helped me a whole lot, not just going into this year but, I hope, the rest of my career."

Who knows what fate holds? It's a fact that when Sanya Richards-Ross is healthy she's as good as anyone.

"My training is right on schedule," she said, adding with a laugh, not too loud so as to be sure not to wake up her husband, "I don't want to make any predictions. We didn't make any predictions about Ross going to make it this far," and who would have predicted the Giants beating the Patriots four years ago?

"I'm just going to take it easy and have fun," she said. "I really, really want to claim my first individual gold medal. That is my target for sure."

Usain Bolt awaits

DAEGU, South Korea -- American Walter Dix, running in sunglasses at night, was so in command and control that he could look left and right as he cruised down Lane 2 to a strong and easy victory Saturday night in his heat of the men's 100-meter dash. He said afterward that he had come to Daegu "to win three gold medals," in the 100, the 200 and the relays. In his heat, another American, Justin Gatlin shook off freezer burn around his ankles to earn an automatic qualifier spot. He declared afterward that Sunday night's 100 final would "probably be one of the most epic world championship we have ever seen."

Confidence is of course a good thing when you have to run against Usain Bolt.

The issue is whether confidence, or anything, matters.

The 2011 version of Bolt is not 2009 or, for that matter, 2008. Even so, the Bolt who was on display Saturday night looked lethal enough. He ran the night's fastest time, 10.10 seconds, and did so though he jogged the final 50 meters.

The men's 100 heats capped a thoroughly full first day here at the world track championships that also saw Americans Ashton Eaton and Trey Hardee standing 1-2 halfway through the decathlon, Eaton with 4446 points, Hardee with 4393.

In other performances:

-- All four American women moved through to the next rounds of the 400, led by  Sanya Richards-Ross, in 51.37, and Allyson Felix, in 51.45.

"I feel really healthy, the best I've felt in a long time," Richards-Ross, the defending world champion, said.

"I felt controlled," Felix said of the first race in her 200/400 double. "I wanted to establish a fast 150, then go from there. It was a little bit quicker than what I hoped for but I wanted to make it as easy as possible. I feel good, and excited to get started."

-- Britain's Christine Ohuruogu, the 2008 Beijing gold medalist and 2007 world champion in the 400, false-started and was disqualified. She sat on the stairs leading down into the alley called the "mixed zone," where athletes meet the press, for nearly 20 minutes. She just sat there, in disbelief.

When she came through the zone, she said, "I'm broken. You can all see I'm broken. I have nothing else to say. I false-started. I have worked really hard. I came here. I false started."

-- Incredibly, Kenyan women swept the medals, six-for-six, in the marathon and 10,000 meters.

Edna Kiplagat, who had won the New York marathon last fall, won here in 2:28.43. Priscah Jeptoo took second, Sharon Cherop third.

No nation had ever swept the medals at a worlds or Olympics.

Prior to the Kenyan finish in that marathon, none had even managed a 1-2 finish.

Then came the 10k.

The Kenyans didn't just go 1-2-3.

They went 1-2-3-4:

Vivian Cheruiyot won in 30:48.98, a personal best, followed by Sally Kipyego, then by defending champion Linet Masai. Priscah Cherono finished fourth. Ethiopia's Meselech Melkamu, the African record-holder, took fifth.

All of that, and then came the men's 100 heats.

Jamaican Asafa Powell is not here, purportedly with a groin injury. American Tyson Gay is hurt. Further, American Mike Rodgers and Jamaican Steve Mullings are out because of doping-related issues. The field isn't what it could be.

"Epic" remains to be seen.

Dix, it must be said, looked solid, in 10.25. He said, "I wanted to come out of the blocks well so I could finish easily. That was a great race for me," and it was.

Bolt, it must also be said, remains Bolt.

Dix raced in Heat 2, Bolt in 6.

Before Bolt lined up in Lane 4, he pretended to brush back his hair in an imaginary mirror, to make himself prettier for the cameras. He shot both index fingers as if they were guns. He smoothed his hair back again.

He settled his silver shoes into the blocks, his sponsor logo trimmed in gold. The gun went off, he exploded out and, essentially, the race was over.

Dwain Chambers, over in Lane 8, who came in second in that heat, in 10.28, was asked later if he thought Bolt might be vulnerable.

He said, "I don't think so."