Winter Games XC -- why not?

SOPOT, Poland — The Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics rang the bell on a year of imagination and fresh thinking for the International Olympic Committee. The IOC’s all-members session immediately before the opening ceremony produced, over a day and a half, 211 comments from the floor.

The signal was clear for the new president, Thomas Bach, under the guise of his “Olympic Agenda 2020” program, as the IOC launched itself toward Monaco in December and another all-in assembly — he has a clear mandate for change, the members urging a fresh look at, well, pretty much everything.

In short: Be visionary. Be imaginative. Be creative.

So: here Thursday, the question emerged anew as track and field — still the most important of the international sports federations — prepared for its three-day indoor world championships.

Why not cross-country at the Winter Games?

Of course there’s already cross-country skiing at the Winter Olympics.

What about cross-country running?

“I think we have to contribute to the fight of this direction,” Lamine Diack, the president of the track and field federation, the IAAF, said at a news conference, adding a moment later, “Certainly, ourselves, we are looking at that.”

To begin with the most obvious challenge:

It’s commonly accepted that the Olympic charter says Winter Olympic sports must be played on snow or ice.

Here is what the charter says, word for word: “Only those sports which are practiced on snow or ice are considered as winter sports.”

Parse that as you will.

Here is what Bach has said, albeit in a different context, and parse this, too: “The Olympic charter is not set in stone. We have to evolve, adapt to modern times.”

The next issue: what about the weather?

It was of course warmer in Sochi, with its palm trees and 55-degree weather during the Olympics, than in Sopot. But Sopot, a cute little beach town that boasts the longest wooden pier in Europe, jutting out into the Baltic Sea, was not so bad Thursday at 37 degrees Fahrenheit or, if you prefer, almost 3 Celsius.

Great cross-country weather.

It was warmer most days in Vancouver in 2010 than it was in Sopot. And Torino in 2006 often saw  weather comparable to Thursday in Sopot.

To be clear, these are the indoor championships at Sopot's Ergo Arena; cross-country is not on the competition schedule. The weather reports here, or in Vancouver or Torino, are winter talking points.

The weather report for Friday for Pyeongchang, South Korea, site of the 2018 Winter Games? High of 44. (7 Celsius.)

Cross-country running is not supposed to be like Fourth of July at the Santa Monica beach.

As the respected British track outlet Athletics Weekly has pointed out, cross-country often takes place on “muddy fields, thick turf or dusty trails,” but it has “also regularly been seen on snow.”

The 2012 European championships, just outside Budapest? Snow, icy ground, “vicious sub-zero temperatures,” and a “huge success.” The 2013 worlds, in Bydogoszcz, Poland — on an icy course.

Going all the way back to the 1992 cross-country world championships? On a snowy course in Boston.

Now, another positive for cross-country on the Winter Games program:

There are, in all, 204 national Olympic committee. Of those, 88 were in Sochi; of those 88, only three were African — Morocco, Togo and Zimbabwe. Putting cross-country on the program would do wonders for what the IOC calls “universality,” or the notion that the Games truly belong to the entire globe, especially the Winter Olympics.

There’s room on the running calendar for cross-country. It’s a fall and winter sport (in the northern hemisphere). The IAAF world championships are now held in odd-numbered years — 2013, 2015 and so on, meaning the Winter Games fall perfectly. The Olympics could offer spots for men, women and relays.

For those who simply want to argue that cross-country flatly can’t belong on the Winter program: explain basketball, a sport that stretches across the winter months if there ever was one, on the Summer Games program. You have 10 seconds.

Finally, there’s history — beautiful history and fantastic tradition — to consider:

Cross-country was part of the Summer Games in 1912, 1920 and 1924.

On race day in Paris in 1924, temperatures reached 103 degrees, or 40 celsius. Adding to the racers’ woes, as the story goes, were fumes from a nearby industrial chimney.

Only 15 of the 38 racers finished.

The alarm was such that cross-country was yanked from the program — and, of course, has never returned.

The first-place finisher in that 1924 team race was none other than one of the greatest long-distance Olympic runners of all time, Finland’s Paavo Nurmi.

Between 1920 and 1928 Nurmi won a record nine Olympic gold and three individual silver medals; in his career, he would set 22 official and 13 unofficial world records; there is a copy of a Waino Aaltonen statue of him in, among other places, the garden of the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland, just a couple kilometers down the road from where the IOC is based.

Six years ago, the long-distance running aficionado Seppo Luhtala of Finland, too, had an idea — what about cross-country at the Olympics? Luhtala is the author of ‘Top Distance Runners of the Century’ and the producer of many films, including ‘Running is Your Life,” which followed Lasse Viren’s life and training prior to the 1980 Moscow Summer Games.

The line of Finnish distance running goes from Nurmi to Viren — Viren winning double gold in the 5 and 10k in both the 1972 and 1976 Games; he would finish fifth in the 10k in 1980.

Through his book, Luhtala got to know many of the world’s great distance runners. In 2008, three of them wrote a letter to the then-IOC president, Jacques Rogge, urging him to add cross-country to the Games as either a Summer or Winter sport, saying the problems of 1924 were “certainly unique” and it would be “wonderful” to give the world’s best cross-country runners the “chance to compete” at the Games.

The three signers: Haile Gebrselassie, Kenenisa Bekele, Paul Tergat.

It is difficult, given their many achievements, to know quite what to highlight:

Gebrselassie, from Ethiopia, is the 1996 and 2000 10k gold medalist; Bekele, also Ethiopian, the 2004 and 2008 10k gold medalist and 2008 5k gold medalist; Tergat, from Kenya, is the 1996 and 2000 silver medalist, the 2000 Sydney 10k considered one of the best races ever.

Tergat is now an IOC member.

Diack is, above all, a realist. He recognizes fully that the Winter Games sports federations are unlikely to welcome the addition of the IAAF to their show with, shall we say, champagne.

If cross-country can get on the Summer Games program — he allowed as that would work, too.

The Summer Games, though, are already so big.

There’s way more room for growth on the Winter side. And if ever it might be cross-country’s best chance to get into the Winter show, it’s now.

“Now,” Diack said, “we have to push.”

Eugene: track ghetto or capital?

Eugene, Oregon, is a beautiful little town. It has many virtues. The issue at hand is whether it ought to be the track and field ghetto of the entire United States. A more charitable way to put it, of course, would be to call it the track and field capital of the United States.

Because after the announcement this week that the NCAA Division I outdoor track championships from 2015 through 2021 will be held at venerable Hayward Field, there's little doubt that Hayward, and Eugene, and for that matter, Oregon, are poised to be -- if not flat-out are -- at the epicenter of the track and field scene in the United States for essentially the next decade.

Query: is that a good thing?

Hayward staged the 2013 NCAAs. It will play host to the meet next year. Going through 2021 will make it nine straight.

Each year in late May or early June, Hayward puts on a Diamond League meet, the Prefontaine Classic. In 2014, Hayward will be the site of the world junior championships; in 2015, the USA nationals; and in 2016 -- just as in 2012 and 2008 -- the U.S. Olympic Trials.

Meanwhile, Portland -- just up the road -- recently won the right to put on the 2016 world indoor championships.

In Portland, the Oregon Project, with coach Alberto Salazar, is home to some of the world's leading runners, including Mo Farah, Galen Rupp and, now, American teen sensation Mary Cain. Olympic and world decathlon champion Ashton Eaton and Nick Symmonds, silver medalist in the 800 meters at the 2013 Moscow world championships, headline the list of athletes who in recent years have come out of Eugene.

Depending how you see it, this week's NCAA announcement is either brilliant or yet another turn in a disturbing trend to further niche-ify track and field -- to consign the sport to a distant corner of America, to a remote college town in the late-night Pacific time zone where the sport is destined to get noticed every so often, if then.

It must be noted, of course, that track and field in Oregon revolves around Nike. Without Nike there is virtually nothing.

In its elation over the 2021 thing, the University of Oregon put out a news release that maybe was just a little bit over the top. It quoted athletic director Rob Mullens as saying, "Being the birthplace of running in the United States, Track Town USA offers the most unique experiences for both student-athletes and fans alike."

When the biographies of Jesse Owens, Glenn Cunningham, Jim Ryun, Billy Mills and other greats get around to claiming Eugene as the "birthplace of running," that will surely be news. As will the fact that the University of Chicago played host to the NCAA championships virtually every year, 13 times, from 1921-36 (they were at USC in 1934, Cal-Berkeley in 1935).

Meanwhile, giving credit where it is due: boosters of the move to see so much action in Eugene, like Vin Lananna, the farsighted senior university associate athletic director who is also president of the entity that is itself called TrackTown USA, envision Hayward being a permanent site for the NCAA championships, like Omaha, Neb., is for men's baseball, or Oklahoma City for softball.

And that's fine.

But there are two key distinctions.

One, Omaha's convention and tourism bureau, for instance, recognized that it was unlikely to be a so-called "big-league" town like nearby St. Louis or Kansas City. Those cities actually really do have NFL and Major League Baseball teams.

So to build the Omaha "brand," they aggressively sought the College World Series and have bid successfully in recent years for events such as the U.S. Olympic Trials in swimming. They are concededly after a wholesome, family-style vibe.

Eugene is hardly in competition with Portland or Seattle. And maybe track and field is after the family scene and maybe it's after the die-hard -- nobody is quite sure what audience it's after. That's for sure one of the challenges. Another of the many issues facing the sport is that, if you've never been to an evening at the track before, you often leave after three -- or more -- hours feeling you're not quite sure what you've just seen.

At any rate, the key distinction is this:

Track is the No. 1 sport at the Summer Olympics. You can like it or not, Omaha and Oklahoma City, but baseball and softball are no longer in the Games.

Moreover, everyone in Eugene and, for that matter, Oregon, you can this it or not as well, but the IAAF, track's international governing body, wants more in the United States. Way more. They look at this country, and they see New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Miami, big cities, all these huge and important markets, and the only activity seemingly going on of note is in Eugene, or Portland, and Portland is hardly a top TV market, and they ask -- huh?

And that, friends, is altogether a reasonable question if you want track and field to stop being a niche sport in the United States.

Awards gala turns to doping talk

MONACO -- Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Jamaican sprint stars, were named Saturday the IAAF male and female athletes of the year. To think it would have been anyone else would strain credulity. What, they were going to name Bohdan Bodarenko or Zuzana Hejnova? Only track diehards know he's a high jumper from Ukraine and she is from the Czech Republic and runs the 400 hurdles. Come on.

Bolt and Fraser-Pryce won three gold medals apiece, and in spectacular fashion, at the 2013 world championships in Moscow. Bolt is, more or less, track and field. He was his usual awesome self, winning the 100 at the exact instant a lightning bolt flashed across the sky, the moment captured in a remarkable photo. Candidly, Fraser-Pryce was even better than he was in Moscow, winning the women's 100 by an absurd .22 seconds.

The IAAF did not direct voting for the awards. Even so, the challenge facing it and, more broadly, world sport is that the two Jamaicans were going to be the obvious winners in a year in which matters of doping and its protocols have emerged as a major concern in Jamaica and, indeed, once again, in track and field.

Eight Jamaicans have tested positive this year, including former 100-meter world-record holder Asafa Powell and two-time Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown.

This is not -- repeat, not -- to impugn Bolt or Fraser-Pryce or to assign guilt by association.

Bolt has never tested positive and has consistently proclaimed he runs clean. Fraser-Pryce served a six-month sentence after a positive 2010 test for oxycodone, saying it was for a medicine she took after oral surgery. Oxycodone, a banned narcotic, is not considered a performance-enhancer or a masking agent.

Bolt's award is his fifth in six years. Fraser-Pryce's is her first and, as well, the first for a woman from Jamaica since Merlene Ottey in 1990. She said she was "really excited, of course." Saturday's announcement marked only the third time that athletes from the same country have won both awards; Americans Carl Lewis and Florence Griffith-Joyner won in 1988, Britons Colin Jackson and Sally Gunnell in 1993.

Fraser-Pryce's award also is believed to mark the first time an athlete who has previously served a doping suspension has been named athlete of the year. Again, in fairness, her suspension was for a painkiller, not a steroid or blood-booster. Nonetheless, she served six months.

"Jamaica has had some problems this season," Bolt acknowledged, referring not to Fraser-Pryce but to the failed tests by the others, adding, "But that is not part of my focus."

Some problems, indeed:

The World Anti-Doping Agency is now reviewing the apparent systems breakdown by the Jamaican anti-doping agency, which goes by the acronym JADCO. This summer, former JADCO executive director Renee Anne Shirley claimed in a Sports Illustrated story that the agency had conducted just one out-of-competition test in the five months leading up to the London 2012 Games.

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Dr. Herb Elliott, JADCO's head, may not have the medical credentials he claims. It's now not clear whether Elliott will stay in his position.

Dr. Paul Wright, JADCO's senior doping tester, told the BBC the rash of failed tests may be the "tip of the iceberg." His comments came just days after a WADA team visited Jamaica.

In Kenya, meanwhile, WADA and International Olympic Committee authorities are growing increasingly impatient while waiting for confirmation that a task force to investigate allegations of a doping culture there, promised more than a year ago, has been set up.

It was noted at the WADA conference in Johannesburg that this IAAF gala was going on at precisely the same time as the WADA event. The IAAF likes to portray itself as the top dog among all Olympic sports. Usually, it has good reason. But for those IOC members now serving on the IAAF council it was apparent that other IOC members here were scarce. Like, maybe even none.

There's a new world order in the Olympic movement. The Jacques Rogge years are done. It's in the IAAF's keen interest to reach out to the IOC and to be tuned in -- acutely -- to what the new president, Thomas Bach, is saying, where he's saying it and how he's saying it.

Like -- a few days ago in Johannesburg, when he's warning Jamaica and Kenya that if this kind of thing keeps up they might be banned from the Olympics for doping irregularities.

In real life, nobody really believes that is going to happen. But -- it's the tone that matters. Keep in mind, too, that IOC vice president Craig Reedie was just voted in as the incoming WADA president.

Yet, at the news conference Saturday afternoon announcing the athlete of the year winners, IAAF president Lamine Diack took the occasion to assert that WADA was running a "ridiculous" campaign aimed in particular at Jamaica and Kenya. Say what?

“I read in the newspapers and it was like a campaign against Jamaica, and I think it was ridiculous,” Diack said. "They are the most tested athletes in the world.

“And so I read in the newspapers how WADA are going there and they are going to suspend," meaning the two nations from the Olympics. "They cannot suspend anybody!

“It was ridiculous, this campaign. After Jamaica, they went to Kenya because some doctor went there and said the Kenyan athletes are not controlled. They are the most controlled -- 650 or so athletes in Kenya controlled, every time, in and out of competition. They went there. What did they find? Nothing.”

Diack said, "So I think we have to stop all this. We are doing our best in athletics. You will never have an athlete suspended for four years in football," meaning soccer.

He said again a moment later, "Stop all this."

Bolt, who is typically guarded with the press when it comes to volunteering information on sensitive subjects, proved quite forthcoming Saturday. He allowed as the relentless drumbeat of news since mid-summer about whether or not JADCO was -- or was not -- doing its job was now having a meaningful impact.

It was, he said, hitting him in his wallet, with a potential sponsor just this week backing out of a deal.

"It is really costing me money now and I'm not too happy about it," he said.

Perhaps nothing, ladies and gentlemen, is likely to spur change faster in Jamaica than that -- its biggest star is now going to demand it, and for the most elemental of reasons. Always remember: money talks.

Also revealing was this:

In an interview Friday, Fraser-Pryce had suggested that Jamaica's track and field athletes might need the protection of a union to better serve their needs. She even said she would be willing to strike if the occasion warranted.

Different people are of course motivated by different things. Fraser-Pryce's rise from one of Jamaica's hardest neighborhoods and whose desire both to serve and give back is well-documented.

To gain any sort of traction, one would have to believe an athletes' union in Jamaica would need Bolt's support. Then again, he typically gets asked at news conferences either about his next party or about his next sequence of workouts -- not his next public-service campaign, though a fair amount of good work back home actually does get done in his name.

Asked Saturday if he would also be willing to walk a picket line, Bolt said, "Everybody has their own personal idea. Personally, track and field is my job."

In that spirit, he reiterated his new goal is to run under 19 seconds in the 200, if his body holds up. His world record is 19.19, set at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

He said he had just gotten back to training about two and a half weeks ago. "I'm just getting soreness in my muscles now," he said.

He said he never sets out each year to be athlete of the year. "I just want to run fast. I want to keep my titles," he said, adding a moment later, "I just do my best, show the world I want to be a champion."

That was at the afternoon news conference. Later, at the evening awards show, with the cameras rolling for a broadcast going live around the world, it was back to the doping talk -- if obliquely.

“I know track and field’s been through a lot, but I see a lot of positive things coming out,” Bolt said. Directing his remarks to young athletes, he said, "Show the  world that we can do this, and we can make athletics a better place.”

Portland wins 2016 world indoors

MONACO -- The U.S. team has long been No. 1 in the world in track and field. Hosting the world in track and field? Not so much. The U.S. has not played host to a major championship since 1992, in Boston. Before that, Indianapolis staged the world indoor championships, in 1987. Of course, Atlanta and Los Angeles put on the Summer Olympic Games. That was 1996. And 1984.

To say that this has been a recurring sore spot with track and field's governing body, the IAAF, would be putting it mildly. When, oh when, would the United States -- and, more particularly, USA Track & Field -- ever step up?

On Friday, Portland, Oregon, won the right to stage the 2016 world indoor championships, USATF president Stephanie Hightower asserting that under the direction of federation chief executive Max Siegel and in concert with TrackTown USA president Vin Lananna there is energy and synergy to "rebuild the brand of track and field in the United States."

The IAAF Council awarded Portland the 2016 event amid a spirited campaign that also saw it give Birmingham, England, the 2018 world indoors.

The UK is now lined up to stage the 2014 Commonwealth Games (in Glasgow), the 2016 world half-marathon championships (Cardiff, also awarded Friday), the 2017 world track and field outdoor championships (London, at the same stadium that staged the 2012 Games) and, now, the 2018 world indoors.

Talk about legacy from the 2012 Olympics.

The 2014 world indoors will be staged March 7-9 in Sopot, Poland.

Birmingham had staged the 2003 world indoors, IAAF president Lamine Diack at the time calling them the best-ever, and but for the fact of an American bid would probably have won going away for 2016.

"This is a sport that needs to nurture its roots in the United States," UK Athletics chief Ed Warner acknowledged Friday after all the political horse-trading was said and done.

The IAAF's "World Athletic Series," which includes its major championships, is sponsored by adidas; the current deal goes through 2019. It sometimes can seem as though everything sports-related in the state of Oregon is underwritten by Nike. How the two will mesh come 2016 remains uncertain.

Warner also said, "I feel as though Christmas has come early for British athletics."

For Portland and USA Track and Field, as well.

Teen middle-distance sensation Mary Cain announced here Friday that she would be forgoing college and turning pro, and would be based in, where else, Portland, with coach Alberto Salazar, and the Oregon Project, with stars such as Olympic medal-winners Mo Farah and Galen Rupp. Her plan, she said: "To throw myself into insanely fast races and have no pressure."

The Portland 2016 plan:

A three-day meet in March 2016, tentatively March 18-20, the week after the NCAA indoor championships, at the Oregon Convention Center, with seating, Lananna said, for "8,400-plus."

A new 200-meter track will be built and then, as a legacy of the event, repurposed for use -- somewhere. It will be the only indoor track in the track-crazy state of Oregon, Lananna noted.

TrackTown USA served as the organizers for the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Olympic Trials at venerable Hayward Field in Eugene, on the University of Oregon campus. It will also serve as the local organizing committee for next year's IAAF world junior championships, also in Eugene.

The 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials will be back in Eugene, based at Hayward.

All this begs the obvious:

It's fine, maybe even great, that TrackTown has lit a -- or, maybe more accurately, capitalized on the -- spark in Oregon. There's a lot of Nike money behind all this, in Oregon. At the same time, Oregon is a long way away from pretty much everywhere else. Anyone who has ever been to Eugene knows it is hard to get to. And almost no one who gets drafted by the Portland Trail Blazers ever goes, wow, that was my first choice.

When was the last time you ever heard any of your European, Asian or African friends say, gee, you know, I want to vacation in the United States and I think I'm going to go to -- Portland? San Francisco, absolutely. New York, definitely. Disneyland, for sure. Portland? Get real.

Look, there are a lot of reasons to like Portland. Excellent coffee. Fine wine. Lewis and Clark. But it is not a major market, and to argue otherwise strains credulity.

If, as Hightower asserted, track and field is truly to be re-branded in the entire United States, it needs to think about a strategy that gets people where it's at in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, the Bay Area, Boston, DC, Detroit, Seattle, Phoenix, Tampa, Minneapolis, Miami, Denver and on and on.

Asked about that, Siegel said "television properties" were in the works without offering more specifics. Lananna volunteered the example of the MLS Portland Timbers soccer team, saying that a few years ago it was nothing and now it draws "rabid" crowds in a "crazy environment," adding, "We hope to do the same … we feel very confident we will be able to do take those same steps forward."

Those would be giant steps, indeed, off a three-day track meet in an indoor convention center in Portland, which -- let's not forget -- will be staged amid the hoopla of NCAA basketball March Madness.

It's worth noting something else. Cain said Friday that when she was younger she was a swimmer and idolized Michael Phelps. Phelps, by putting himself back in the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency testing pool, has taken his first steps toward being back in the water in Rio in 2016. Don't kid yourself. This, in the sphere of Olympic marketing, is what USATF is likely up against in 2016, too.

Still, give USATF and TrackTown USA credit. This is its first step, a welcome step in bringing world-class international track and field back to the United States after more than two decades. It's Portland, sure, but you have to start someplace, and that someplace has to be where you know it's going to work.

SAFP: no Jamaica doping problem

MONACO -- Jamaica does not have a doping problem, sprint star Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce said. Eight Jamaican track and field athletes have tested positive this year, including former 100-meter world-record holder Asafa Powell and two-time Olympic 200-meter champion Veronica Campbell-Brown. The World Anti-Doping Agency, meanwhile, is now reviewing the apparent breakdown by the Jamaican national anti-doping agency in the testing of the Caribbean island nation's sprinters in the six months leading up to the London Games.

"I don't think we have a doping issue," Fraser-Pryce said in an interview with a small group of international reporters. Instead, she said, at issue in Jamaica are cases of individual athletes "neglecting to correctly check the supplements" they are ingesting, adding, "The truth is, it's a minefield."

She decried a lack of support from both the Jamaican track and field federation and the government, declaring, "Nobody is there to give us guidance and support," and saying the time had perhaps come for the island nation's to unionize: "We as the athletes need a voice."

If need be, unions strike to achieve their goals. Runners run. Would Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, champion of the 100-meters at both the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games, winner of three gold medals at the Moscow 2013 world championships, refuse to run, to support a union, to prove a point?

"If it comes down to actually not competing [because] things are not up to par … yeah, I would," she said. "If it means lobbying for the athletes, yeah, I would. And not having our name tarnished, yeah, I would."

Fraser-Pryce's comments came on the eve of the IAAF's annual gala here in Monaco, normally a festive event free of such politics. She is the odds-on favorite to be named the female athlete of the year at ceremonies Saturday night. The two other finalists: New Zealand shot put star Valerie Adams and Czech 400-meter world champion hurdler Zuzana Hejnova.

Fraser-Pryce, typically, is cheerful and understated. Indeed, though she had much to say Friday, she was her usual soft-spoken self -- her comments delivered so quietly that one had to strain to hear her, even with a microphone.

The recently elected president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, speaking amid the WADA conference in Johannesburg, this week issued a dramatic warning to nations such as Jamaica and Kenya, saying athletes might be denied a chance to compete in the Games if nations were not compliant with WADA rules.

"The [IOC] charter is very clear that this," meaning expulsion, "can be one of the results," he told the British newspaper, the Daily Mail. "It's not the only one and not the exclusive one. But non-compliance can result in the exclusion from competitions."

There would be a long road before the IOC would consider exclusion. Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce -- and Kenya's 800-meter champion David Rudisha -- are huge stars. Even so, the fact that the new president would even mention it as a possibility is noteworthy, with Rudisha since saying, "It is bad. The faster they tackle the matter the better for our country's image. Not all of us are cheats. Some may have been [mis]led into abusing drugs."

Asked Friday about the possibility of Jamaica being excluded from the 2016 Rio Olympics, Fraser-Pryce said Friday, "I am not the one who writes the rules. I can't answer the question. I hope it never gets to that."

Fraser-Pryce herself served a six-month suspension in 2010-11 after a positive test for oxycodone. She said it was for medicine she took for a toothache. Oxycodone, a banned narcotic, is not considered a performance-enhancer or a masking agent.

She has said since dominating the 100 and 200 and running a leg in the winning Jamaican 4x100 relay in Moscow that some have questioned whether she was doping. On Friday, she said, "There is nothing for me to hide," adding of the rash of positive tests affecting other Jamaican sprinters this year, "I don't think it has cast any shadows on my achievements because I know what I have worked hard for."

She also offered incredible insight into what drives her not just to win but to keep winning.

In Moscow, Fraser-Pryce won the 100 in 10.71, defeating second-place Murielle Ahoure of Ivory Coast by a ridiculous .22 seconds.

She won the 200 -- not her favorite event -- by .15 seconds. Again, Ahoure took silver.

She anchored the Jamaican relay to victory in a championship-record 41.29. The Americans took silver, more than a second behind, in 42.75.

When she crosses the line first, Fraser-Pryce said, she does not exult in victory. Instead, she is even at that instant already thinking -- what's next?

"I am not enjoying it," she said, adding a moment later, "“A lot of athletes become so overwhelmed with their success when it happens, they forget about the next year. I constantly try to remind myself that this is just one chapter in my journey. There are many more chapters to write and finish."

She also said at other moments, "I feel like if I become complacent, then everything I’ve achieved might fall." And, "I never allow myself to fully unwind or have a vacation." And, "It’s always about doing better and taking advantage of the present."

Others, she said, "become complacent and comfortable and believe they have arrived."

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce -- never.

There's no quit in John Nunn

Forty-five years ago, at the Mexico City Olympics, a marathon runner from Tanzania finished dead last in the marathon. His name was John Stephen Akhwari. Akhwari had fallen and hurt his knee. He was bloodied and bandaged by the time he straggled to the finish line, more than an hour after the winner. There, he was asked by the filmmaker Bud Greenspan why he had not quit despite obvious pain.

"My country did not send me 7,000 miles away to start the race," Akhwari said. "They sent me 7,000 miles to finish it."

At the recently concluded world track and field championships in Moscow, the American race walker John Nunn fulfilled a mission that in many ways rivals John Stephen Akhwari's for passion and pathos.

And -- absolutely, though it might not seem it at first blush -- dignity.

In the 50-kilometer race walk, Nunn, dead last by about an hour, crossed the finish line in screaming pain. There, he collapsed and had to be carried off the track on a stretcher. Under the stadium, intravenous fluids were pumped into him. An attendant asked if he could take off his singlet and shorts. Nunn was in such pain he could not move. So, literally, his uniform had to be cut off him.

"I learned," he said, reflecting on it a few days later, "you just don't quit."

In the tightly knit race-walking community, Nunn's effort has already achieved a status approaching epic. Perhaps a few hundred people in Luzhniki Stadium saw it as well.

It deserves more.

Nunn finished 46th, in 4 hours, 34 minutes and 55 seconds.

The winner, Ireland's Robert Heffernan, had crossed nearly an hour beforehand, in 3:37.56.

The guy who finished 45th, Sándor Rácz of Hungary, had made it to the finish line some 22 minutes before Nunn, in 4:12.18.

For the last half-hour of John Nunn's ordeal, it was evident to the Luzhniki camera operators of the jumbo-screen TV that Nunn had set himself on a course of action and a test of will that was awful to watch and yet impossible to turn away from.

The cameras were on his every haunted step. Every time he winced or stumbled or grabbed his leg, it was all there on the big screen. Everyone among the few hundred stragglers at Luzhniki, it seemed, was crying out to him -- keep going.

By the time Nunn entered the stadium, the crowd was down to maybe 100 people. These 100 lived every moment of that last half-hour with him.  When he lurched across the finish line, collapsing, screaming, there were tears in the stands at what he had done and they had shared, all of them together.

"As soon as I finished," Nunn said, "my mind quit, and my body cramped up. They picked me up and I was just yelling. It was so painful. Tears were just pushing out of my tear ducts. They put me on a stretcher. They put me in some medical room.

They said, 'John, we had to take off your shirt so we can examine you. Can you take it off?'

I said, 'No.'

"Same with the shorts.

"So they cut off the shirt and the shorts.

"They put a towel on me. They put an IV in my arm. It took an hour, a full hour, for the intense cramping to calm down to where I could somewhat move."

The marathon -- 26.2 miles -- is usually thought of as the ultimate Olympic test.

The 50-kilometer race-walk is, in a word, harder.

While race-walking is keenly appreciated around the world, in the United States it is little known and mostly thought of as an oddity.

Which in itself is unusual. The odds of making the U.S. Olympic team in the race-walk -- if you can handle the mental toughness -- would appear to be better than in almost any other endeavor. There are untold numbers of 2:20 marathoners in the United States. And yet there are only a handful of guys who would even consider the 50k walk.

Nunn, for that matter, was the only American entrant in the event in Moscow.

The rules, it must be said, can take a little getting used to.

Walkers must keep least one foot in contact with the ground at all times. Two feet off simultaneously -- what would in ordinary speech you'd call  "running" -- is, in the jargon of race-walking, called "lifting," and grounds for a warning. Another rule requires straight legs at the point of first contact with the ground. If three judges give a walker warnings, the third warning leads to a disqualification.

It can all seem -- for those unfamiliar with the rules -- like a spectacle of sorts.

But make no mistake.

Race-walking can be, especially on a warm day like it was the day the 50k went down in Moscow, brutal. The physical demands are one thing. It's the mental grind that is the really hard part.

There are two Olympic-caliber distances, 20 and 50k.

A 50-kilometer race translates to roughly 31 miles.

For comparison, the marathon is 26.2 miles.

A world-class men's marathon is run in just over two hours.

A world-class men's 50k race-walk? Between three and a half and four hours.

The last American to win an Olympic medal is Larry Young, who won bronze in 1968 and 1972. In the U.S., funding is simply not a priority. The discipline has for years been kept alive in the colleges mostly at lower-level schools.

The results in Moscow showed exactly what happens when you invest time, effort and resource in race-walking programs and athletes. Eight different countries put athletes in the top 10.

Behind Ireland's Heffernan?

Russia's Mikhail Ryzhov finished second, in 3:38.58.

Third? Jared Tallent of Australia, 3:40.03.

Nunn's goal coming in was to try to finish in under four hours. A two-time Olympian, he raced the 20k in Athens in 2004 and then moved to the 50k in London last summer, the only American in the race, finishing in 4:03.28, in 43rd place.

It all started well enough for Nunn in Moscow, the kilometers clicking steadily by.

Indeed, through 20 he was hanging in there at a pace of under 5 minutes per kilometer. He turned kilometer 16 in 4:34.

At kilometer 23, though, Nunn started to feel some tightness in a hamstring. It got so bad he could not push off. He backed off. But it got worse. Then the pain moved down and around the leg, into his quadriceps, calf and shins. Then up, into his elbow joints.

"Everything started crunching down," he said. "It was miserable. It turned into Groundhog Day. Every step I was taking, I was, like, this is not going to end."

By kilometer 30, Nunn was doing roughly 6 minutes per kilometer. For conversion, 6 minutes per kilometer would see a jogger cover a mile in about 9 minutes and 40 seconds.

The debate started in his head -- to quit or not?

"At 25k," he said, "I thought, 'No way I'm going to get through this.' "

And this is where the thing gets truly fascinating. Like every racer in the 50k, Nunn went into it expecting pain. Maybe not so soon and not so severe. Even so, the race hurts. It's a given.

What to do?

"I would hit divots in the road. It would shock my body. My leg would go into an intense spasm of pain and lock up and double me over and I would, like, stop for a second or two and then keep moving. Other times, it would spasm so bad and I would try to keep moving but there would be 15 or 20 seconds of intense pain. Two or three minutes later, five at most, there would be the most intense cramping in my legs.

"I realized I would either fall over and be in total convulsion or not do anything and hit the finish line. I thought I would just keep going and see what happens."

Kilometer 44 would prove especially brutal. It took 7:42. More conversion: that would be a jogging pace of 12:23 per mile.

And still he kept going. "I honestly thought I was going to get told by the staff of the race I was going to have to finish out on the course, you are not going to finish in the stadium. But they never did tell me that."

He said, back now in the San Diego area where he is father to a 9-year-old, the two of them proprietors of a cookie business famous in track and field circles, "Part of me, at the end -- I remember when I finished the pain was pain I have never experienced in my life.

"There was a part of me that was crying out of humiliation. I was feeling like I was getting so much better," meaning at 50k strategy. "And then everything happened that day -- there was devastation at what had gone on.

"But in the 50k you just can't quit. Quitting became not an option. I know other people -- other people in the race said, 'I'm done,' and walked off long before the finish line. But USA Track  & Field paid for my airfare and training camp and for us to stay at a nice hotel."

And he said, in an echo of John Stephen Akhwari so many years earlier, "I had been asked to race the 50k. And so I did."

To quote Lenin, what is to be done?

It is good to be the king, and it is good -- unless and until there is evidence of doping, which it must be said could be tomorrow and could be never -- to be Usain Bolt. Because when you are Usain Bolt, you win, and when you win, you celebrate like he did Sunday at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, after yet another dominating performance by the Jamaican 4x100 men's relay team to close out the 2013 track and field world championships.

He shouted, "Moscow!" into the microphone. He threw his spikes into the crowd. Barefoot on the track, he did his "to the world" pose and performed his take on a Cossack dance.

Most important, later in the evening, Bolt -- perhaps alone among all the figures in track and field - has the gravitas to say what needed to be said about these championships. On a scale of 10, he said, they deserved a seven.

"It has been a different championships," he said. "But it has not been the best. It got better over the days. More people got more relaxed. More people started smiling. There were more people in the stands. It picked up at the end but at the start it wasn't as good."

He added, referring generally to the Russians, "They don't smile a lot but they're cool people … and there are lots of beautiful women."

The Russian journalists wanted more. "The food," Bolt said, "was always the same. And I'm used to going to the 100-meter final with a stadium that's packed, so that was different.

"So there were little things but nothing major and it was stuff that took me a while to get used to."

If Bolt weren't using the athlete access, he could have added that one entrance to the stadium was through a grass path by a parcourse set-up that was being used -- despite security restrictions -- by the locals. Or that access to the IAAF tent required going through not one, not two but three separate security stations -- all 20 feet apart.

Or that the wireless access in the press seating was completely worthless. And that the main press center was a half-mile away from the journalists' entrance to the stadium. The press bus stop was even farther.

Because Bolt doesn't have to worry about such things, it's not his problem that eating and drinking in Russia -- we're not talking alcohol, just regular stuff -- is super-expensive. A bottle of water can run 170 rubles. That's nearly $6.

Not to mention the controversy over Russia's anti-gay law, which erupted over Swedish high jumper Emma Green Tregaro's rainbow-painted fingernails and Russian pole vault champion Yelena Isinbayeva's comments about Russians considering themselves "like normal, standard people," and Russian sports minister Vitaly Mutko saying Sunday the law won't infringe on the private lives of athletes and fans at next February's Sochi Games.

In ways large and small, these championships set the stage for Russia to play host to the world in Sochi -- and, as they always do, fixed track's place in the world of sport for the here and now.

So -- what of track and field?

Track geeks know that the sport's next big thing is the world championships, in Beijing, back at the iconic Bird's Nest, site of the 2008 Games, in 2015.

That is two years from now. Two years is a very long time.

Until then, track and field will be pretty much -- at least for the casual fan -- off the radar.

That is, to be obvious, nothing short of a disaster.

Yes, track's governing body, the IAAF, puts on the regularly scheduled Diamond League series of meets, mostly in Europe, in the spring and summer. The IAAF deserves credit for that. But the meets are mostly relegated to -- to use a newspaper analogy -- the sports-section back pages.

Consider:

Soccer is on, and on television, pretty much somewhere in the world seemingly every day, and the World Cup will go down next year in Brazil. The NBA has made tremendous inroads all over the globe with a season that runs from October until June. American football has already started and won't conclude until February. Even the American baseball season runs from February until late October, sometimes early November.

The 2013 Diamond League will feature three more meets -- Stockholm, Zurich, Brussels -- but, unless there's a lightning strike like last year's 12.8 world-record by American 110-meter hurdler Aries Merritt at the Brussels meet, track won't get much worldwide attention absent -- regrettably, yet another -- doping scandal.

The best thing track has going for it is Bolt.

He says he is thinking about running at the Commonwealth Games, next year in Glasgow.

To be, once again, obvious: the more Bolt is on the track, the more track is on track.

To be even more obvious: every sport needs stars.

It would make for a great bar bet to see if the average person anywhere in the world could name even five athletes not named Usain Bolt who competed in the Moscow championships.

Here's the corollary to that bet: if asked to name a track or field star, that average person would probably say ... Carl Lewis ... or Michael Johnson. That shows you how much work track and field must do to bring itself out of its glory days and into the 21st century.

What Bolt didn't say about the Moscow meet, because it's not his job:

Great meets tend to produce world records. It just so happens that the swimming world championships in Barcelona immediately preceded the track meet in Moscow.

It is just four short years since the craziness of the plastic-suit era at the 2009 Rome world swim championships, when swimmers set 43 world records and experts were wondering if those marks would ever be threatened.

In Barcelona, the swimmers set six new world records, all by women. They set three in one day, the final Saturday of the meet. Katie Ledecky of the United States set two world records herself.

In Moscow -- no world records.

Sure, there were world-class performances in Moscow: three championship records, 16 world-leading bests, 48 national records. In all, 18 nations won gold medals, 38 won a medal of some color.

Those totals are all the more intriguing considering who didn't show because of injury (the likes of London 2012 men's 800 gold medalist David Rudisha) or doping (significant cases before the meet in Russia and Turkey as well as failed positives involving U.S. sprinter Tyson Gay and, among others, Jamaicans Asafa Powell, Sherone Simpson and Veronica Campbell-Brown).

FINA, swimming's governing body, introduced high-diving at the Barcelona championships. It was a huge hit -- action sports, if you will, for the water crowd.

The track championship is still the same meet it is, and has been, for years.

A few thoughts:

There's no rock or hip-hop music at a track meet the way there is at a baseball game, when a reliever is introduced in the late innings. What if, for instance, each of the sprinters in the 100, 200 and 400 was allowed to pick a riff by which he or she was introduced?

What about putting wireless in the stands -- in a robust way -- so that fans could really follow along on their cellular phones or tablets? The IAAF iPhone and iPad app, introduced before the Moscow worlds, was genuinely great. Who actually knew about it?

For that matter, nine days is too long -- way, way, way too long -- for this meet. Make it six, max. That's long enough still for the marathons, the distance events, everything. And if it's not, then it's time for some creative thinking about how to do this championship differently.

Every sport has to change, and grow. There are sound reasons swimming and gymnastics were elevated this year into the top rank of the International Olympic Committee's financial tier, along with track and field -- a slot the IAAF had for years occupied, alone.

Outside Luzhniki Stadium stands a statue of Lenin. Thus he -- in a matter of speaking -- oversaw everything here. So he and perhaps his most famous aphorism are worth bearing in mind as the IAAF and its stakeholders pack up and begin the two-year trek to Beijing, some serious thinking in order between now and then about what its proponents believe is -- and could again be for all -- the finest sporting endeavor humankind has ever dreamed up.

As Lenin said: what is to be done?

The sensation Brianna Rollins

It's an unusual thing, indeed, when Usain Bolt storms to victory -- this time, in the 200 meters -- and he is not the star of the show on an action-packed night at the world championships at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. That would be the new sensation of the women's 100 meter hurdles, Brianna Rollins of the United States, who -- in a race that many track aficionados had been looking forward to as the showdown of the meet -- came from behind to defeat the reigning Olympic champion, Sally Pearson of Australia.

Rollins' winning time: 12.44.

Pearson's: 12.5 flat.

Ponder this:

Rollins has made herself, in one year, NCAA champion, U.S. champion and, now, world champion. She finished up at Clemson this spring. She turns 22 tomorrow. She has now won 34 straight races, including heats, across four different disciplines.

Rollins ran an American-record 12.26 to win the U.S. outdoors in June. That 12.44 is her third-fastest time of the year even though it was run into a slight -- 0.6 meters per second -- headwind.

"I'd call it a great year for me," Rollins said. "I'd call it a blessed year."

As Benita Fitzgerald Mosley, the 1984 Los Angeles Games 100 hurdles gold medalist, now the U.S. Olympic Committee's chief of organizational excellence, put it in a telephone interview, Brianna Rollins "is something else -- she really is."

As for Bolt, who had dropped a starting block on his foot in the 200 heats but then got himself taped up and ran, anyway:

Sitting in the blocks, now his style, he got off to the slowest start in the field but nonetheless, as usual, had the race won by the curve. He eased up and still finished in 19.66.

By anyone else's standards, 19.66 would be extraordinary.

For all the understandable to-do about what Bolt does in the 100, the 200 always has been his best event.

To show how he has re-ordered time: 19.66 is his 10th-best 200 mark. Of course he holds the world-record in the event, 19.19, set at the 2009 world championships in Berlin.

Jamaica's Warren Weir, the London 200 bronze medalist, took second, in 19.79.

American Curtis Mitchell prevented a Jamaican sweep by coming on hard in the final 50 meters, finishing in 20.04 for third.

This is how close it was for third: Jamaica's Nickel Ashmeade crossed in 20.05 for fourth.

It was the first time in 200 history that all eight guys went a wind-legal 20.37 or faster.

Some more facts and figures to underscore not only Bolt's place in the record books but his hold on the imagination:

-- He became the first to win the 100-200 sprint double twice at the world championships.

-- His third 200 worlds gold surpasses Michael Johnson and Calvin Smith.

-- He now has seven world gold medals to go with the six he has won at the Olympics. A presumed eighth, the 4x100 relay, is coming up Sunday.

Pearson came into the women's 100 hurdles after overcoming an early-season hamstring problem. She ran 12.62 in the heats, then threw down a 12.5 in the semifinal, the fastest qualifying time, signaling that she was indeed ready to go.

Make no mistake: Sally Pearson is a big-game racer.

Rollins ran 12.55 in the heats, 12.54 in the semifinals.

This would be, of course, Rollins' first major international final. Also in Saturday's final: Dawn Harper, the 2008 Beijing gold medalist and 2012 London silver medalist.

In the first half of the race, it looked as if Pearson might just pull it off.

Rollins reacted horribly to the gun, 0.263. Pearson, meanwhile, got off to a good start, 0.154, and led through the first few hurdles.

But Rollins eventually made her move, passing Pearson over the eighth and ninth hurdles.

With the victory, Americans won both the women's and men's sprint hurdles at the worlds for the third time; David Oliver won the men's 110 hurdles on Monday. Americans won previously in 1995 and 2001.

"Today I didn't have the best start but I didn't panic," Rollins said. "I was just focusing on my own lane and working hard, trying to finish strong. Today was about the victory, not about the time. The fast times will come. I have a huge respect for Sally Pearson. She is a great athlete and it was great to compete with her today. I was nervous but nervousness is normal. It's just about the way you handle it."

For her part, Pearson said, "Of course you are going to a race to win but I am satisfied. It is not gold but the best I could produce tonight. It was a hard year for me. In July, others were smashing me. Tonight I was only beaten by one. Next year, I won't be getting any silver!"

Great Britain's Tiffany Porter ran a personal-best 12.55 for third place, Britain's first women's 100 hurdles medal at a world championships. Harper took fourth in 12.59, with another American, Queen Harrison, fifth in 12.73.

"It was a horrible race, and I don't know what happened," Harper said.

In other action, the illustrious Meseret Defar of Ethiopia won the women's 5000 meters, in 14:50.19, the fastest time in the race at the worlds in eight years -- despite a last 200 meters run in a relatively pedestrian 29.43.

Defar is 5-foot-3, 92 pounds of tough. Her record:

Three Olympic 5k medals -- 2012 and 2004 gold, 2008 bronze.

Five worlds 5k medals, a record -- two golds, one silver, two bronze.

In her typically understated way, Defar said afterward, "It is a big achievement for me."

Molly Huddle finished sixth in 15:05.73, the best finish ever by an American.

The U.S. women's 4x400 relay team's world championship winning streak -- five -- came to an end. Russia won, in 3:20.19. The Americans -- running without the injured Allyson Felix -- took second, in 3:20.41. Great Britain came in third, in 3:22.61.

In the women's high jump, Russia's Svetlana Shkolina, the 2012 bronze medalist, took gold Saturday at 2.03 meters, or 6 feet, 8 inches. American Brigetta Barrett, the London silver medalist, took second again; she cleared 2.00, or 6 6-3/4, but not 2.03.

"Two silver medals in the course of 12 months -- it's been one heck of a year," Barrett said later.

Finally, this:

Kenya's previous best performance at the worlds in any field event had been 15th in the triple jump qualifying.

In the men's javelin, won by the Czech Republic's Vitezslav Vesley with a throw of 87.17 meters, or 286 feet, Kenya's Julius Yego took fourth. He threw a national-record 85.40, or 280-2.

Mo Farah's double double-double

Distance running is a hard, lonely affair. The tell is the last kilometer. The crucible is the last lap. In our time, one man has emerged -- from among the Kenyans, the Ethiopians, the Eritreans -- to dominate, truly dominate, track's two distance events, the 5,000 and the 10,000 meters. He is Mo Farah, a global citizen who was born in Somalia, trains in Oregon, runs for Great Britain.

Farah won the 5,000 meters Friday night at Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium by the narrowest of margins, crossing in 13:26.98. In so doing, he won not just a double-double but has now performed an amazing double double-double.

That is -- he won both the 5 and 10k here in Moscow. At last year's London Olympics, he won both the 5 and 10k as well. At the 2011 worlds in Daegu, South Korea, Farah won the 5k; he lost the 10k by 26-hundredths of a second to Ibrahim Jeilan of Ethiopia, whom he beat in this year's 10k by two steps.

Only Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia has done the worlds double, in 2009. Bekele also doubled up at the 2008 Beijing Games. And the word "legendary" is typically attached to Bekele now as if it were his first name instead of Kenenisa.

"It was a lot harder work than last year." Farah said afterward. "I never thought in my career that I'd achieve something like this."

The finish of Friday's 5k was so fantastic that it was, genuinely, an instant classic.

Hagos Gebrhiwet of Ethiopia finished second, Isiah Kiplangat Koech of Kenya third. Both were timed in 13:27.26. They had to go to the thousandths to separate them: Gebrhiwet crossed, the clock said, in 13:27.259, Koech in 13:27.260.

It couldn't get any closer.

Of course, for track freaks it made for a sort of holy grail. But for anyone who appreciates will and effort, it shows why track can still claim such a powerful hold on the imagination -- and why, despite the malevolent ill of doping that has corrupted so much in the sport over the past several years, a race like Friday's 5k and its finish offers such tangible evidence of what it can still be all about.

It's three guys pushing themselves, to their limits, to get to the finish line first. Who wants it most?

Of course, this all assumes -- and there is no, repeat no, evidence to date -- that Farah is guilty of anything other than being very, very good.

With that caveat:

With three laps to go in the race, Farah went to the front. The others in the race lined up behind, among them his training partner, the American Galen Rupp, the silver medalist in the 10k in London.

A little math, for those unfamiliar with the 5k on the track.

A track is of course 400 meters. The 5000 -- this is fourth-grade math, but just to make it easy -- is 12 and one-half laps.

The races tend to start slow but then pick up toward the end. That, too, is only sensible.

A little more math, for reference:

The best 400-meter runners, like the American LaShawn Merritt, run championship races in about 44 seconds. A truly exceptional 400 winner goes 43-something.

What happens in the 5 and 10k is that after lap after numbing lap, the body starts screaming, "Stop - this hurts, and bad." That, though, is precisely when the best distance guys have to turn on the jets and run a last kilometer of about 2:20-something and a last lap of roughly 51 to 53 something. Anything less -- no chance.

In Farah's winning 10k in Moscow, he needed a 2:26.23 final kilometer to hold off Jeilan.

In Friday's 5k, he ran a 2:22.29 last kilometer. That is simply flying.

His last 800: about 1:51.

Last 600: 1:21.93.

Last lap: 53.51.

The difference between first and third in Friday's 5k, 28-hundredths of a second, is the smallest-ever in a world championships. The previous smallest differential: 33-hundredths, at the 2003 worlds in Paris.

Rupp finished eighth, in 13:29.87.

Farah also said this: "Anything is possible, I guess."

In other action Friday, Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce also doubled up, winning the women's 200 meters to go with the 100 she won Monday.

She became the first winner of the women's sprint double since 1991.

Fraser-Pryce made it look like a breeze: 22.17.

Murielle Ahoure of the Ivory Coast, the silver medalist in the 100, took second in the 200, too, in 22.32. They had to go to the thousandths in the women's 100 as well; Ahoure was timed in  22.313.

Blessing Okagbare of Nigeria, who is also having a fantastic meet, took third, also in 22.32; precisely, 22.319. Okagbare won silver in the long jump on Sunday behind American Brittney Reese, with a jump of 6.99 meters, or 22 feet, 11-1/4 inches. On Monday, she ran sixth in the 100, finishing in 11.04.

American Allyson Felix, going for a record fourth world title in the 200, didn't make it out of the curve, crumpling to the track, holding the back of her leg. She was carried off by her brother, Wes, who is also her manager; an ultrasound revealed a tear of her right medial hamstring, USA Track & Field announced.

She said later she was "extremely devastated" but in classic Allyson Felix form took the time and effort to nonetheless wish "all of my teammates the best for the rest of the meet."

The U.S. men's 4x400 relay won -- and the only drama was whether there would be a dropped baton.

There was not.

David Verburg ran a 44.37 to open things up. Tony McQuay, the 400 silver medalist, split a 44.68. Arman Hall ran 44.92. Merritt, the 400 gold medalist, ran 44.74 to close things down, and the Americans won by more than a second, finishing in 2:58.71, 2013's best time.

Jamaica took second, 2:59.88, Russia third, 2:59.9.

For Hall, it was his fifth world championship medal in three years -- 2011 world youth 400 and sprint medley relay champion, 2012 world junior 400 champ and 4x400 relay and, now, his first senior title.

The United States, minus Merritt, took silver in London last year.

Germany's David Storl defended his shot-put title with a throw of 21.73 meters, or 71-3 1/2, the first back-to-back winner since American John Godina in the mid-1990s. To celebrate, he put on a silly hat.

American Ryan Whiting came in second at 21.57, or 70-9 1/4.

Canada's Dylan Armstrong, with a throw of 21.34, or 70 1/4, got third. That medal is Canada's fourth, its best-ever total at a worlds.

In the men's long jump, American Dwight Phillips, 35 years old, the 2004 Athens Games gold medalist, four times a world champion -- most recently in 2011 -- had hoped Moscow would produce one final leap for the record books.

It was not to be.

The oldest man ever to jump in the final of a world championships, Phillips jumped 7.88 meters, or 25-10 1/4, on his third attempt. But he did not advance, and finished 11th.

"Today I gave everything I had, and it just wasn't enough," Phillips said. "Obviously I was looking for that storybook ending but I'm so proud of myself."

In the men's 200, Usain Bolt ran a 20.66 in the first round, 20.12 in the semifinals. The finals go down Saturday.

The heats of the women's 100-meter hurdles got underway with American sensation Brianna Rollins qualifying in 12.55.

Australia's Sally Pearson, the 2012 Games gold medalist, served notice that she may be -- finally in 2013 -- ready to rock with a season-best 12.62. Dawn Harper, the London silver medalist and 2008 Beijing gold medalist, got through easily in 12.84.

The 100 hurdles semifinals and finals are also set for Saturday.

Rainbow fingernails stir it up

There was a terrific track meet Thursday at Luzhniki Stadium at Moscow. But the central action came -- unsurprisingly -- courtesy of Russian pole vault diva Yelena Isinbayeva, underscoring the controversy over Russia's new anti-gay law. It all started when Swedish high jumper Emma Green Tregaro posted an Instagram picture of her fingernails painted "in the colors of the rainbow," with the hashtags #pride and #moscow2013. Also, Swedish sprinter Moa Hjelmer ran in the heats of the 200-meter heats with her nails painted in rainbow colors as well.

Isinbayeva, who got her gold medal Thursday after Tuesday's captivating pole-vault action, told reporters, in English, "If we allow to promote and do all this stuff on the street, we are very afraid about our nation because we consider ourselves like normal, standard people. We just live with boys with woman, woman with boys.

"Everything must be fine. It comes from history. We never had any problems, these problems in Russia, and we don't want to have any in the future."

Green Tregaro is one of the world's best jumpers, a consistent top-10 performer; she is due to return to the track Saturday for the high jump finals. Isinbayeva said even painted fingernails were out of place.

"It's unrespectful to our country. It's unrespectful to our citizens because we are Russians. Maybe we are different from European people and other people from different lands. We have our home and everyone has to respect (it). When we arrive to different countries, we try to follow their rules."

Isinbayeva's comments in defense of the Russian law, which prohibits the promotion of homosexuality to minors or holding gay pride rallies, need to be fully understood in context.

Who thinks that someone of her stature made such remarks without the full support beforehand of the leading authorities in Russia? After all, she is due to be the honorary mayor of the Sochi 2014 Winter Games athletes' village.

This, too: the demonstration by the Swedish athletes makes for an interesting test. There were no immediate reports of Green Tregaro being arrested. Nor, for that matter, Hjelmer.

Back to the track:

In the same way that Isinbayeva captivated fans Tuesday night with her victory in the pole vault, the men's high-jump thrilled fans Thursday, with Ukrainian Bohdan Bondarenko coming out on top in a duel with Qatar's Mutaz Essa Barshim, Canada's Derek Drouin and Russia's Ivan Ukhov.

For the first time since 1995, a 2.35-meter clearance in the high jump -- 7 feet, 8-1/2 inches -- would not even be good enough for a medal.

Bondarenko's winning jump: a championship-record 2.41 meters, or 7 feet, 10-3/4 inches.

Barshim and Drouin tied for bronze last year in London; here, Barshim took silver, Drouin, bronze. Ukhov, last year's gold medalist, settled for fourth. American Eric Kynard, the 2012 silver medalist, took fifth.

With a huge contingent of fans from Ukraine on hand, in their blue and yellow shirts, Bondarenko, seventh last year in London, made three tries at a new world record -- 2.46 meters, or 8 feet, 3/4 inch -- but no go. It was quite a spectacle; he wore one yellow shoe and one red.

In the men's 3,000-meter steeplechase, Kenya's Ezekiel Kemboi continued his dominance with an 8:06.01 victory.

If track and field were more of a mainstream sport, particularly in the United States, Kemboi would be a dream. As it is, in many precincts, he is a virtual unknown. Amazing, considering he has two Olympic golds and, now, three world championship golds.

For this race, Kemboi showed up with a Mohawk. He is a character and celebrated his win -- which he ensured with his typical kick into overdrive down the homestretch -- with, per usual, a dance, using the Kenyan flag as a makeshift skirt.

Under his singlet, it turned out, he was wearing a shirt that proclaimed he was wearing his victory -- he had a certain confidence, apparently -- to Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta and deputy William Ruto, "my heroes my kings I love Kenya."

Kenya's Conseslus Kipruto -- he's just 18 -- took silver, in  8:06.37, and France's Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad bronze 8:07.86.

As a measure of their county's dominance in the event, check out the rank of Kenyans in top 10 in the order of finish: 1, 2, 4, 7.

Meanwhile, Evan Jager of the United States ran fifth in 8:08.62, the best finish for an American man since Mark Croghan in 1993. Jager's marked the fastest fifth-place time, ever, in a 3,000-meter steeplechase at a world championships.

Jager now has the three fastest 3k steeple times in American history. And he has only run the event 12 times.

"I'm definitely happy with how far I've come, and I'm excited for the future," Jager said. "But I really wanted a medal. I wanted it real bad."

Jehue Gordon of Trinidad and Tobago became the island nation's second-ever world champ -- behind sprinter Ato Boldon, now an NBC analyst -- winning the men's 400-meter hurdles, in 47.69, the fastest time in the world this year. American Michael Tinsley finished in a personal best 47.70.

Both men ended up sprawled on the blue track just after the finish line, the race too close to call for a few moments.

Serbia's Emir Bekric, the European under-23 champion who almost seems too big and too tall to be running track -- he looks like a linebacker for the Green Bay Packers, or something -- took bronze, in a national-record 48.05.

Felix Sanchez, the 2004 and 2012 Olympic champion, got fifth, in 48.22.

In the women's 400 hurdles, Zuzana Henjova of the Czech Republic, who had served notice all week that she was the one to beat, came through for the gold in 52.84, the best time in the world this year.

Americans went 2-3, Dalilah Muhammad catching Lashinda Demus at the line for the silver. Muhammad finished in 54.09, Demus in 54.27.

Caterine Ibarguen's win in the triple jump marked Colombia's first-ever gold medal at the worlds.

Finally, in the women's 1500 -- the start of which was held for 10 minutes while the men's high jump wrapped up -- Sweden's Abeba Aregawi kicked past American Jenny Simpson, who had led for most of the race.

Aregawi -- who ran for Ethiopia at the 2012 Olympics, finishing fifth -- crossed in 4:02.67, Simpson in 4:02.99. Ethiopia's Genzebe Dibaba took their in 4:03.86.

Simpson's silver proved emphatically that her victory in the event two years ago at the worlds in Daegu, South Korea, was no fluke.

"I think the last 200 I was almost unconscious," Simpson said. "I just kept telling myself, just run as hard as you can."

Mary Cain, the 17-year-old from Bronxville, N.Y., finished 10th, in 4:07.19.

She said, "I think later tonight I'm going to be really, really angry in a good way, and I think I'm going to be really motivated. I think you guys are probably a little scared. Normally you see me like, 'Oh, ducks, puddles,' but I'm going to go home and I'm going to get into this. I think this is going to motivate me so much for next year.

"Next year there are no worlds. It's just me and learning how to race."