Not yet a 'pregnant penguin'

MOSCOW -- The clock said it was a couple minutes past 10 in the evening. All the action on the track was over. The only matter left to be decided was at the pole vault, and there was only one jumper left. Yelena Isinbayeva had all of Luzhniki Stadium to herself. Just the way she likes it.

The greatest female pole vaulter in history, the first-ever in history to clear five meters, won the third world title of her incredible career, the only one in Tuesday's field to clear 4.89 meters, or 16 feet and exactly one-half of an inch.

The world record is 5.07, or 16-7 1/2. Isinbayeva made three tries as the clock ticked past 10. None were really close. No matter. The crowd came to see the Pole Vault Diva, Isinbayeva. They were thrilled, roaring at her every attempt, at what -- for the first time -- felt like a real world championships here at Luzhniki.

"I am so happy the era of Isinbayeva is back again," she said at a news conference that stretched into early Wednesday. "It was never finished."

Perhaps this is the last of Isinbayeva's world titles. Or not. She says now she is going to take what she called a "small woman's break," intending to have a baby next year. She is due to be the honorary mayor of the athlete's village at the Sochi 2014 Winter Games and said she intends to be walking around -- she really said this -- like a "pregnant penguin" offering the world's skiers and skaters "the traditional bread and salt" like a good Russian host.

The world has never seen anyone quite like Yelena Isinbayeva. And the scene at the pole vault runway -- Isinbayeva's catwalk -- capped a fantastic night of track and field, one that saw the U.S. team win four medals: one gold, three silver.

LaShawn Merritt simply blew away all comers, including London 2012 Olympic champion Kirani James, to win the men's 400 meters, in 43.74 seconds, 2013's best time. Fellow American Tony McQuay took silver, in a personal-best 44.40.

Luguelin Santos of the Dominican Republic -- 19 years old -- finished third, in 44.52.

James? An improbable seventh, in 44.99.

On his way out, James told Universal Sports, "I just died. I don't know what happened."

For Merritt, the 2008 Olympic champion, this marked redemption, and in a big way. He has overcome injury and the embarrassment of a ban relating to the purchase of a male-enhancement product at a convenience store and weathered it all with dignity. McQuay was far from alone when he said at a late Tuesday news conference that he considered Merritt a "great role model."

Merritt said winning Tuesday was a "sweet moment." He also said, "I guess you could call it a comeback. But I don't feel like I ever left. I always continued to work hard and keep faith in my ability -- spiritually, physically and mentally. To come here … I was ready for it."

In the men's 800, Nick Symmonds took silver, in 1:43.55, the best-ever finish in the event by an American and the first medal for a U.S. man since Rich Kenah's bronze in 1997.

Ethiopia's Mohamed Aman won, in 1:43.31 -- the 2012 world indoor champ adding the 2013 outdoor title to his collection. He is just 19. Djibouti's Ayanleh Souleiman took third, in 1:43.76, the first medal for his country since Ahmed Salah won silver in the marathon at the Tokyo worlds in 1991. Souleiman is just 20.

Well before anyone even got to Moscow, the 800 was going to be a wide-open affair. Not one of the three medalists from the 2012 Olympics was here. Gold medalist David Rudisha of Kenya, who set a world-record 1:40.91 in London, was hurt. So was silver medalist Nijel Amos of Botswana. Timothy Kitum didn't make the team Kenya sent to Moscow.

No one in the world had run under 1:43 this year.

In the heats and semifinals, astonishingly, all the Kenyans were eliminated. That meant that -- for the first time in the 30-year history of the world championships -- the men's 800 final would be Kenyan-free.

Symmonds had finished fifth in London; fifth at the worlds in Daegu in 2011; sixth at the Berlin worlds in 2009. He is 29. He had blogged before coming here about how significant it would mean to him personally and professionally to leave Moscow with what he called a "shiny medal" around his neck.

Coming down the stretch, it looked like it might be gold. But with about 20 meters to go, Aman proved just too strong.

"Nothing is impossible," Aman said. "You have to believe in yourself and train."

Echoed Symmonds, "To be a medalist takes a lot of hard work, it takes a lot of luck as well. A lot of experience. At the age of 29 ... it feels like all the hard work and the sacrifice has paid off."

All of that set the stage for the pole-vault drama.

There are three superb female pole-vaulters right now in the world. The American Jenn Suhr won Olympic gold, the Cuban Yarisley Silva silver in London. And then, of course, there is Isinbayeva -- the 2004 and 2008 Olympic champion who won bronze in London.

Isinbayeva is also the 2005 and 2007 world champion. But in Berlin in 2009, she no-heighted. In Daegu in 2011, she took sixth.

Last year in London, she was back to her old ways -- with that third. But for her, third is not -- well, first. And, as she acknowledged after the jumps were all over Tuesday, referring to the last few years, "Sometimes I was desperate … sometimes I thought I should quit."

When all three cleared 4.82, or 15-9 3/4, it marked the first time since 2007 that three women had cleared that height in the same competition. This was, in every way, world-class stuff.

Plus, the crowd was totally into it. The runway and pit were set up in what, in an American stadium, would be a football end zone. The stadium was not filled -- not quite -- but attendance was, because of Isinbayeva, eminently decent. Plus, because of Luzhniki's overhanging roof, the crowd noise was loud, indeed.

Isinbayeva would later say it was the best crowd support she had received. Ever.

"Yes," she said, through a translator in Russian, "that was the best-ever. It was my home crowd. I felt like I was at home. What can you say? Being at home helps you. If we had the Olympics in Moscow [instead of London], the results would be different.

"I've gotten support in other countries. But tonight I knew. Tonight, everyone was behind me. I felt all my emotions. I absorbed it. The support was just colossal."

To have the stadium all to herself? She smiled. In English, she said that was "nice feelings."

Suhr held the lead until she missed her first try at 4.89. Then the pressure was on.

Isinbayeva cleared.

Game over, pretty much -- though the other two women tried to clear, it was not their night.

Suhr took silver, Silva bronze.

Suhr called it a "great competition," adding, "If I was a spectator, that's exactly what I would want to see."

She also said, "When I think of where pole vaulting was and where it is now, you have to thank Yelena for getting us there. making the spotlight, making it one of the premier events to watch. Look at today. Every event was over but everyone stayed to watch it. We have to thank her for really paving the road for that."

People, the era of Isinbayeva is back again. For emphasis, it was never finished.

Empty seats everywhere

MOSCOW -- If Luzhniki Stadium were, say, Staples Center, you'd be tempted to say that the crowd that "filled" the seats for the third full day of the 2013 track and field championships was like something you'd see at a mid-season women's basketball WNBA game featuring the Los Angeles Sparks against, say, the Tulsa Shock. That underwhelming.

It was so disconcerting, in fact, that one American business executive sent a text message Monday evening to a reporter friend saying he had a section of the stadium all to himself.

This on a cool, beautiful night when Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce of Jamaica rocked the women's 100 meter finals in 10.71 seconds, winning by an almost unheard-of 22-hundredths of a second; American David Oliver made himself the comeback king in the 110-meter high hurdles in 13-flat; New Zealand's Valerie Adams proved herself, yet again, unstoppable in the women's shot put with a winning throw of 20.88 meters, or 68 feet, 6 inches; and more.

It's embarrassing, no two ways about it, and whether the blame is to be apportioned to the city of Moscow, the Russian government, the IAAF, the fact that it's summer and the Russians are quite naturally at their dachas and someone should have known that when they were planning a world championships for August -- whatever, it absolutely does not reflect well on what is supposed to be the No. 1 sport of the entire Olympic movement.

If it's this way here, in Moscow, it makes you wonder: what are the attendance figures bound to be in six months in Sochi, down in southwest Russia, for the 2014 Winter Games?

To be super-obvious: Moscow is one of the world's great capitals. Sochi is not. You can get to Luzhniki on the Moscow metro, one of the world's best. You get to Sochi, down in southwest Russia, on the Black Sea, by significant planning. The Sochi airport is not big. Only so many planes can land there in so many days.

These championships mark the beginning of Russia's so-called decade of sport. The 2014 Games will be followed by the 2015 swimming championships in Kazan and then, in 2018, soccer's World Cup.

One suspects the World Cup final, which will be back here in Luzhniki, will draw better than the track championships. Here, through three days, are the official numbers:

Saturday:

Morning -- 9,420

Evening -- 31,895

Sunday

Morning -- 12,861

Evening -- 40,461

Monday

Morning -- 9.350

Figures for Monday evening were not immediately available.

As always, the fine print:

-- The numbers are based on ticket scans at stadium gates. Someone who goes in and out multiple times counts only once.

-- Luzhniki is ordinarily an 81,000-seat stadium. As it has done in prior championships, the IAAF has blocked out blocks of seats to lower capacity. On Saturday and Sunday, capacity was 59,000 -- 43,000 spectators and 16 "accredited guests," meaning VIPS, media, athletes and others. On Monday, capacity was lowered further still, to 50,000 -- 34,000 spectators and 16,000 "accredited guests."

"It's dead. There's no atmosphere," Olympic champion Felix Sanchez told reporters after winning his 400-meter hurdles heat Monday morning.

"It's like day and night compared to London last year," he said, referring to the 2012 Summer Games.

As the attendance figures underscore, the contrast is especially marked in the morning heats.

In London, even the morning sessions were jammed. Here -- there are pockets of fans, in particular Ukrainians, noticeable in their blue and yellow, in the yellow, orange and red seats. Mostly, though, there are reporters and camera crews. Some are complete track junkies and love every single tidbit. Others are here on the off chance something unusual happens.

David Johnson, who runs the Penn Relays each spring and is here as a correspondent for Track & Field News, has been to every IAAF world championship since the first edition in Helsinki in 1983. He said of Moscow, "It feels like the smallest attendance, based on the men's 100 meters, in my experience."

That race, Sunday night, saw the stadium filled to roughly two-thirds capacity even though the biggest star in Olympic sports, Usain Bolt, was in the house. Bolt ran 9.77 to win; lightning struck at precisely the moment he crossed the finish line, creating not just one of track and field's but indeed all of sport's most iconic photographs in not just this but any year.

Luzhniki features an overhanging roof that circles the stadium. "Despite the size of the crowd," Johnson said, "the architecture of the stadium produces a noise beyond the crowd. It's the visual effect that's lacking."

That same overhanging roof, however, makes the scene -- particularly in the mornings -- even more eerie. The public-address system announcements ricochet, unintelligibly, around the empty seats.

Ticket prices started as low as 100 rubles, roughly $3. Even for Sunday night.

That's right -- you could have seen Bolt run Sunday night for 3 bucks.

Name a better deal in all of sports.

And yet -- the place could only manage two-thirds capacity?

Organizers allege that next weekend, which includes the four relay finals, is sold out. They also said before the event began that they had sold more than 80 percent of the ticket inventory.

Over the weekend, IAAF vice president Sergei Bubka, quoted by Reuters, said the weather might have been to blame:

"It was hot and very sunny and I know for Muscovites -- they always go to their dachas, they go outside, and maybe someone has bought a ticket and they don't attend.

"We insisted very seriously and very strongly regarding a promotion campaign and a lot of money was invested."

Journalist Elliott Denman has also been to every edition of the IAAF championships. A member of the U.S. Olympic track and field team at the Melbourne Games in 1956, he then turned to sportswriting and has been at the business -- one of the best -- for more than 50 years. He called attendance here at Moscow "sparse."

"Like everywhere," he surmised, "people have other opportunities."

Lightning strikes in 9.77

MOSCOW -- A few minutes before the men's 100 meter final here Sunday night, lightning began flashing in the sky over Luzhniki Stadium. Just in time for the Bolt show.

As the rain came down hard and fast, Usain Bolt rocked to victory Sunday night in the men's 100-meter final in a season-best 9.77 seconds.

Lightning flashed, literally, as Bolt crossed the finish line. Some things are just too fantastic for even scriptwriters to dream up. "I need to get that picture right now," Bolt said later. "That is pretty cool."

Track and field is, right now, in many ways, Usain Bolt. It made no difference that his winning time Sunday was not close to his world record of 9.58, not even close. Indeed, it marked only Bolt's sixth-fastest time. His time was, in fact, two-hundredths of a second slower than the fastest mark in the 100 this year, 9.75, run in June by American Tyson Gay, who has since reportedly failed more than one doping test. Gay has acknowledged that he has failed at least one test.

Just imagine if Tyson Gay had won this race. What if his doping matter had come out not before these worlds but -- after? What then for track and field?

American Justin Gatlin, who took second Sunday behind Bolt in 9.85, is the 2004 Olympic 100 champion but then served a four-year doping ban. What if Gatlin had won? What then for track and field?

The sport woke up Sunday to a report that Trinidad and Tobago's Kelly-Ann Baptiste, the  2011 world championship bronze 100 medalist with 2013's third-fastest time in the women's 100, reportedly failed a doping test and had withdrawn from the championships. "Drug Blow," screamed the front page of the Sunday Express, the West Indies' islands main paper.

The list of high-profile sprinters now known or believed to have failed doping tests this year alone: Gay, Baptiste and Jamaicans Asafa Powell, Sherone Simpson and Veronica Campbell-Brown.

Baptiste, as the newspaper noted, trains in Gay's group in Florida. Campbell-Brown and Gay are longtime friends.

Last week, Australian javelin thrower Jarrod Bannister was suspended for 20 months for missing three out-of-competition tests; French hurdler Alice Decaux has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for a supplement.

Forty Turkish track and field athletes have been suspended in recent weeks for doping. Several are just teenagers.

And then there is Bolt -- who has said up and down, this way, that way, every which way that he is clean.

Marion Jones said she was clean, too. So did Lance Armstrong. Everybody says they're clean -- until they're proven not.

“If you’ve been following me since 2002, you would know I’ve been doing phenomenal things since I was 15,” Bolt said last month in London. “I was made to inspire people and made to run. I was given a gift, and that’s what I do.”

Is Bolt the real deal? Is he, finally, the one star the world can believe in?

Or -- like so many other big names who have been unmasked -- too good to be true?

Time ultimately reveals the truth. Always.

Four of the five top finishers in Sunday's men's 100 were Jamaicans: Nesta Carter, who took third behind Bolt and Gatlin in 9.95, as well as Kemar Bailey-Cole and Nickel Ashmeade, both in 9.98.

This from a country that saw its national anti-doping agency perform a total of 179 tests in all of 2012, according to a letter published Aug. 7 in the Jamaica Gleaner. That letter, from the former executive director of the agency, sought to update the figure published in late July in the World Anti-Doping Agency 2012 global statistics database. That 106 figure, R. Anne Shirley said in the letter to the Gleaner, was mistakenly low, due to a reporting error.

All tests carried out by the he Jamaican agency, which goes by the acronym JADCO, were urine tests; JADCO performed not even one blood test, according to the letter.

Arguing that 179 is "somewhat better than what has been previously reported," the letter also said it's still "not as much as the agency or the Government would have/might have wished for …"

At a news conference late Sunday night, Bolt was asked about his connection with the German doctor Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt, and whether he -- Bolt -- had ever used Actovegin, an amino acid preparation derived from calves' blood.

Actovegin is not on the WADA banned list.

Even so, WADA "closely monitors" its use. In part, that's because, for instance, Lance Armstrong and his team were regularly administered it on the grounds it was believed Actovegin would enhance a rider's performance, according to the brief against Armstrong filed by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

"I don't know," Bolt said. "I really don't know the name of any substance. We just give that to my team. My team checks out any doubt. They clear it with everybody, make sure it's not on any IAAF, WADA [list] -- they have no problems with it."

So far, Bolt has had no testing problems.

Which leaves us with what we had Sunday in the rain:

Bolt, as ever, got off to a slow start. After the fiasco at the world championships in Daegu two years ago, in which he was disqualified for false-starting, it is his now way to stay in the blocks and make sure he starts safely.

Ashmeade, for instance, got out in 0.142 seconds. Bolt -- and Gatlin, too -- 0.163.

Gatlin went out hard. But anyone who has watched Bolt race since he burst onto the international scene big-time in 2008 knows that the last 50 meters are his for the taking, and that was the case Sunday as well.

Gatin acknowledged "feeling Bolt next to me" at about 45 meters. For his part, Bolt said, "I had to do what I do the last 50."

It was the sixth world title of Bolt's career -- two in the 100 (2013, 2009), two in the 200 (2009, 2011, with the 2013 race yet to come), two in the 4x100 relay (again, this year's relay still to go).

Of course, Bolt is the 2008 and 2012 Olympic champion as well as world record-holder in the 100, 200 and the 4x100 relay.

It is not just that Bolt wins but that he does it with such dominance. Here are the margins of his 100-meter Olympic and world championship victories:

2008 Beijing Olympics: .20.

2009 Berlin worlds: .13.

2012 London Games: .12.

2013 Moscow worlds: .08.

"I'm going to try to continue with these championships," Bolt said. "I want to be among the greats after I retire from track and field.

"Pele, Maradona, Muhammad Ali, all these guys -- I want to be mentioned among these greats."

For all that he has done on the track, Usain Bolt absolutely, unequivocally deserves to be mentioned among the greats. The challenge for Usain Bolt is that he is the best in his sport, and his sport greatly deserves special scrutiny.

"If he tests positive, he tests positive," Lamine Diack, the president of track and field's international governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF, said recently of Bolt. "It would be a disaster for our sport but we would have to say he is positive.

"But I hope that doesn't happen because we don't need that."

A marathon, or an ordeal?

MOSCOW -- It is said by sport executives at the highest level, almost as if it is a prayer refrain offered in complete sanctification and utter devotion, that athletes are at the heart of everything they do. What to make -- once again -- of the women's marathon at the track and field world championships? The race, the first showcase event of the 2013 championships, started at 2 in the afternoon. The temperature at the start: in the mid-80s. Under an unrelenting sun, with no clouds in a high blue sky, it stayed hot throughout. The humidity: over 60 percent.

Forty-six women finished. Twenty-three did not. That makes for easy math: half as many did not even finish the race as did.

That's not a marathon. That's survival.

Edna Kiplagat of Kenya won the ordeal, in 2:25.44, becoming the first female back-to-back marathon world championship winner. Valeria Straneo of Italy finished second, 14-hundredths back. Japan's Kayoko Fukushi took third, in 2:27.45.

American Deena Kastor, the Athens 2004 Olympic Games bronze medalist, finished ninth Saturday in 2:36.12. Hours after the race, she would post to her Twitter account that it was the "hardest marathon ever," the word "ever" in all capital letters, adding that she couldn't walk on one foot and now had a "blood blister on my lip (of all places) and a horrible sunburn." She added this hashtag: #MyDermoWillHateMe

Why did this race start at such an absurd hour, in such ridiculous conditions? Consider this possibility: 2 in the afternoon in Moscow is 7 in the evening in Tokyo -- prime time Saturday evening viewing. And TV rights fees can be worth a lot of money, it's true.

On the one hand, what race organizers have asked the best female marathoners to run through in recent years at these world championships ought to forever put to rest any argument over whether women are tough enough to handle any and everything. On the other, going forward, organizers need a cold dash of common sense before something dreadful -- like, fatal -- happens.

The 2011 women's world championships marathon in Daegu, South Korea, went off with the temperature at 79 and humidity at 72 percent. At the 2007 race, in Osaka, Japan, the temperature was a searing 90; that race won by Kenya's Catherine Ndereba in 2:30.37, the slowest-ever world championship, hardly a surprise, seven minutes slower than Ndereba ran to win the 2003 marathon.

"I was just trying to endure the race, to get to the finish," Fukushi said after Saturday's third-place effort.

"The time of the race is unusual because I am used to run most of my races in the morning," Kiplagat said.

Chris Turner, a spokesman for track and field's governing body, the IAAF, pointed out that in Daegu and Osaka, some of those who did not finish -- colloquially known as DNFs -- had to be hospitalized because of the brutal conditions. "Here," he pointed out, "none of the DNFs had to be hospitalized."

It should be self-evident that "did not need to be hospitalized" should not be the baseline of running a world-class marathon.

The marathon served as the warm-up -- literally -- to the only final of the night on the Luzhniki Stadium track, Britain's Mo Farah's victory in the men's 10,000, and to Jamaican superstar Usain Bolt's first appearance in the heats of the men's 100 meters.

Bolt eased through in 10.07 seconds, the seventh-fastest time of the day.

"I didn't try to run too fast," he said later. "I was trying to work on my technique to get it right. Tomorrow, I will put more speed into it."

The semifinals and finals of the men's 100 go down Sunday. Bolt will be the huge favorite. Fellow Jamaican Yohan Blake, who won the 100 in 2011 when Bolt false-started, is injured. And American Tyson Gay is out because of a positive doping test.

In the men's 10k, in what proved to be a relatively slow and tactical race, Farah and Ethiopia's Ibrahim Jeilan dueled down the homestretch, just as they did in 2011 in Daegu.

Two years ago, Farah didn't have enough finishing speed. Last year in London, he proved he certainly did, winning not only the 10 but the 5,000 meters as well.

This year, he won by two steps, in 27:21.72. Jeilan crossed in 27:22.23.

Farah said later, "I was thinking on the home straight, 'Not again, not again, not again.' "

The victory now gives Farah the full set -- world and Olympic titles in the 5 and 10k. The only other man to win all four is Ethiopia's Kenenisa Bekele.

Farah is due to run the 5k next Friday.

Kenya's Paul Tanui finished third. American Galen Rupp, Farah's training partner and the silver medalist in London, placed fourth.

"I just didn't kick," Rupp said. "It's not that complicated."

In the mens' decathlon, Americans finished Day One 1-2.

Ashton Eaton, the London gold medalist, ran the 400 meters in 46.02, the fastest 400 ever at a worlds. That gave him a lead of 4,502 to 4,493 after five events over 20-year-old Gunnar Nixon.

Two-time defending champ Trey Hardee dropped out with a hamstring injury. He failed to clear a height in the high jump.

"I'm out there having fun -- no pressure," Nixon said.

Track's dirty day

When people ask, and they ask all the time, is track and field clean, there's only one answer. It came on a day like Sunday, when sprinter Tyson Gay, once among the poster boys for a U.S. Anti-Doping run-clean program, tested positive for a banned substance, and five Jamaicans, including gold medal-winning sprinters Asafa Powell and Sherone Simpson, also returned positive samples.

Those developments followed by just days word that the sport's governing body, which goes by the acronym IAAF, had stepped up its drug-testing program in Turkey amid reports of dozens of positive cases there, perhaps as many as 30, ahead of last month's Mediterranean Games in the city of Mersin.

Results in Turkey remain ongoing; under IAAF rules, a doping case can be announced only after a "B" sample confirms the initial positive finding of a failed "A" sample. Turkey has been hit by a rash of recent cases -- eight in June, including 2004 Olympic hammer silver medalist Esref Apak, and in May, allegations against London Olympic 1,500 meter champ Asli Cakir Alptekin and two-time European 100-meter hurdles champion Nevin Yanit.

The rash of positives Sunday comes just weeks after 2004 and 2008 200 meter Jamaican Olympic champion Veronica Campbell-Brown tested positive for a banned diuretic. Gay and Campbell-Brown are longtime friends.

Powell and Gay, to be clear, are among track and field's biggest names. For them to be busted, and on the same day, is -- there's no way around this -- a double dose of ugly news for a sport that just can't escape the perception that doping remains the fast lane to victory.

The world championships will be run next month in Moscow. Now they surely will go off under a shadow. A thread on the letsrun.com message boards proclaimed: "Admit it, we are all now waiting to see if [Usain] Bolt is positive … "

Bolt, the multiple Olympic champion, self-proclaimed "legend" and world-record holder in the 100 and 200 meters, has maintained to all skeptics that he is running clean.

As Adam Nelson put it in a Twitter post Sunday, "Drug testing detects the symptoms. We have a lot of work to do to fight the cause."

Nelson would know. He was made the 2004 Olympic shot put champ earlier this year after the guy who for nine years had won, Ukraine's Yuriy Bilonog, was finally caught. Bilonog had been doping.

Gay, 30, has run a 9.69 100 meters, the second-fasted ever -- tied with Yohan Blake, behind Bolt's 9.58.

A three-time world champion in 2007, Gay had often been plagued since by hamstring and groin problems. He came in fourth in the 100 at the London Games by one-hundredth of a second. This year, he had run the world's fastest 100, 9.75 in Des Moines at the U.S. nationals in June.

A few years ago, he was part of USADA's "My Victory" program, in which athletes pledged to complete clean. In his testimonial on that website, Gay said, "I compete clean because I really believe in fairness, and besides that, my mom would kill me! Just being honest."

He told Associated Press on Sunday that he had been notified late last week that a sample came back positive from a May 16 out-of-competition test, adding that he will have the "B" sample tested soon, possibly as early as this week. He said he had voluntarily withdrawn himself from Moscow.

It remained immediately unclear what Gay had tested positive for.

"I don't have a sabotage story," he said. "I don't have any lies. I don't have anything to say to make this seem like it was a mistake or it was on USADA's hands, someone playing games. I don't have any of those stories. I basically put my trust in someone and was let down."

Asked by AP who that was, Gay said, "I can't really say it. Sometimes a human being naturally, generally trusts somebody. That's what people do."

USA Track & Field chief executive Max Siegel said in a statement, "It is not the news anyone wanted to hear, at any time, about any athlete."

Powell, for his part, held the world record -- running a 9.74 in 2007 -- before Bolt started his assault on the mark. Powell is still the fourth-fastest man all time and holds a gold medal as part of the Jamaican 4x100 2008 relay team.

Powell has run 9.88 this year. Even so, he did not make the Jamaican team for Moscow.

He and Simpson reportedly tested positive for the stimulant oxilofrine, and Powell issued a statement in which he denied being a "cheat."

It said, "I want to be clear in saying to my family, friends and, most of all, my fans worldwide that I have never knowingly or willfully taken any supplements or substances that break any rules."