Weird, easy, fun: a one-off relay run-off

RIO de JANEIRO — Some people love, in their lives, to create drama. Allyson Felix is not one of these people. She is calm, steady, composed, even-keeled. Pretty much all the time.

Some mysterious karma, however, seemingly delights in connecting the Olympic experience and Allyson Felix with weird mega-drama.

“Why me?” Felix said Thursday evening with a smile.

Referring to her brother and manager, Wes, she said, “I was laughing with my brother about it. Sometimes you just have to laugh. Yeah … it’s just very, very strange.”

In what is widely believed to be an unprecedented Olympic relay do-over, the U.S. women’s 4x100m team — with Felix pulling the second leg — ran Thursday morning in a tangled mess, then got the chance Thursday evening to run again, in a time trial, to try to qualify for the relay final back here Friday night at Olympic Stadium.

To read the rest of this column, please click through to NBCOlympics.com: http://bit.ly/2bMU9xs

First time ever: U.S. women 1-2-3 at Olympic track event

RIO de JANEIRO — In tribute to everyone’s favorite guessing game Wednesday at the 2016 Olympics, herewith this twist on the Where’s Waldo game:

Where’s Ryan Lochte? Back in the United States! After first making a stop at Olympic Village!

Where are the gold, silver and bronze medals in the women’s 100m hurdles? Just like Ryan Lochte — same!

In the final event on a busy track and field calendar Wednesday at Olympic Stadium, Americans Brianna Rollins, Nia Ali and Kristi Castlin swept the women’s 100m hurdles, Rollins winning in 12.48 seconds.

The sweep by the U.S. women marked a significant first in Olympic history.

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Rio 2016 track meet: world-class buzzkill

RIO de JANEIRO — In a shining example of why track and field has such problems, many of the sport’s own making, the men’s 200m prelims got underway Tuesday afternoon — before a nearly-empty house — with its biggest star, Usain Bolt, running at 12:46 p.m. in the ninth of 10 heats. Justin Gatlin ran about a half-hour before, four heats prior.

Under what theory of marketing, salesmanship, promotion — more, relevance — are the No. 1 and No. 2 names in track and field slogging it out in the dog day afternoon?

It’s halfway through the Rio 2016 Olympic meet. Track and field should be seizing its moments in the once-every-four-years spotlight.

Instead, what we have is world-class buzzkill.

The 2016 world indoor championships, in Portland, Oregon, in March, went off before a full house, a show full of music, lights and world-class competition.

The 2012 Olympics in London were marked by full, rowdy crowds, day and night.

Here: not so much.

At the outset: it’s no fun to assert that the track and field competition has serious issues, especially amid what should be an Olympic celebration. But if not now, when?

By now, it’s well known that track’s worldwide governing body is confronting a range of extraordinary issues, among them a purported corruption scheme involving the former president tied to allegations of state-sponsored doping in Russia.

If there ever should be a week when all of the sport’s big-picture issues could be brushed aside, this ought to be it — the Olympics.

Track and field, for all its challenges, and there are many, holds enormous potential. It has long been the king of the modern Olympics and maybe still should be — the one sport that anyone anywhere can, and pretty much does, do, at least in some form. Run, jump, throw. Basic.

Instead, this Rio meet finds itself bedeviled by a bevy of logistics, location, pricing and scheduling challenges, all of which surely have contributed to the sparse crowds. And then there remains the sport’s underlying presentation problem: doping. As in: can you believe what you see? 

All of that was encapsulated in Tuesday’s women’s long jump qualifying. The lone Russian allowed to compete here, Darya Klishina, jumped away. She was part of a field of 38, two groups of 19, that got cut to 12. Eighth, she passed  through to the final.

Why in the world go through such a ridiculous exercise — cutting 38 to 12? Same with the men’s high jump qualfiying on Sunday night — 44, two fields of 22, to 15, an event that Canada’s Derek Drouin won Tuesday night at 2.38 meters, or 7-9 3/4.

All sports, especially Olympic sports, depend on stars and on stories. 

Swimming and gymnastics, which dominate the first week of the Games, have thrown off stars who have become household names: Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Simone Biles, among them, Biles on Tuesday winning her fourth Rio gold medal, in the women’s floor exercise.

Track and field, at these Olympics, seems determined to sabotage virtually every great story there might be.

Christian Taylor is a threat to break the world record every time he competes in the triple jump. He and Will Claye went 1-2 in London, and on Tuesday they went 1-2 again.

In a competition that started at 9:50 in the morning.

Seriously — 9:50 in the morning. To say that the stadium was not full would be — generous.

Afterward, Claye proposed to his girlfriend, the 2008 Olympian and hurdler Queen Harrison. 

Who saw any of this?

In the heats Tuesday morning of the women’s 5000m, American Abbey D’Agostino and New Zealand's Nikki Hamblin tangled together, then fell. In a lovely moment of sportsmanship, D’Agostino then helped Hamblin up, and — painfully — each finished the race.

As the Indianapolis Star would report, the moment drew attention from international journalists — reporters from eight countries waiting to talk to the athletes afterward.

Eight.

There are roughly 200 nations here in Rio.

The men’s pole vault provided high drama: Brazil’s Thiago Braz da Silva won in an Olympic-record 6.03, or 19-9 1/4. Competition started Monday evening and ended after the clock said Tuesday morning.

Granted, it rained Monday, hard, and there was a delay. Even so, if one of the key drivers of the Olympic movement is to draw young fans, how exactly does crowing a champion after midnight come anywhere near achieving that goal? 

Moreover, the American Sam Kendricks took bronze, behind da Silva and the great French champion, Renaud Lavillenie. Kendricks went to Ole Miss and is a U.S. Army reservist; that medal is the first for an American male in the Olympic pole vault in 12 years.

The news conference following that pole vault competition? It started after 2 a.m.

When what happened to Ryan Lochte is in the forefront of way too many minds and the bus schedule at night is irregular, at best: how many logically thinking reporters or news crews want to stick around for a bus that’s supposed to be there at the top of the hour, meaning 3 or 4 a.m. but, you know, may or may not be?

The aftermath of the pole vault further illustrates the disconnect.

The sparse crowd still left in the stadium had cheered boisterously for da Silva. After, Lavillenie said, "If this is a nation where they only want Brazil and they spit on others, then you should not organize the Olympics," he said. He also made a comparison to Hitler's 1936 Berlin Games -- which he then retracted and apologized.

Even so, at Tuesday night's medal ceremony, Lavillenie got hit with a barrage of boos. It moved him to tears.

This was too much for a great many people, among them the International Olympic Committee president, Thomas Bach, who called the boos "shocking," adding it was "unacceptable at the Olympics."

Similarly, Seb Coe, the IAAF president, put out this tweet:

https://twitter.com/sebcoe/status/765728647953219586

Sunday night proved the one night the stadium was full — because of Bolt, of course. And it had the added electricity of a world record in the men’s 400m, from South Africa’s Wayde van Niekerk, who ran 43.03, taking down Michael Johnson’s 17-year-old mark, 43.18.

But Sunday night also highlights the complexities that have made this meet so — unsettling.

Even that men’s 100m final proved problematic. The two semifinals were run at 9 and 9:07 p.m., the final at 10:25. Both Bolt and Gatlin complained later that the time in between was just not enough.

Part of the challenge here has centered on weather -- for instance, Monday’s rain.

Part with location. At prior editions of the Games, track and field and the ceremonies, opening and closing, shared a stadium. Here, ceremonies are at Maracanã. Track and field is taking place at Engenhao. Think Wrigley Field or Fenway Park in the middle of a dense urban neighborhood. Unlike those two baseball parks, however, Engenhao is super-difficult to get to and from — 90 minutes, typically, from Copacabana.

Part, price. Tickets for Tuesday’s prelims ranged from $100 to $350, for the evening finals from $260 to $900. 

Part of the challenge, too, is simple scheduling. 

This Olympic meet runs for nine days.

The U.S. nationals go for four.  

Six would be more than enough.

There are lots of reasons - hello, ticket sales — to slice and dice the track and field schedule into this many days. But that isn’t happening. Outside of Sunday night, the crowds have been thin, at best.

IAAF spokesman Chris Turner, asked about the thin crowds, said:

”The IAAF's original timetable of April 2014 had evening sessions earlier and qualifications during the morning session. This was changed following requests from the local organizing committee Rio 2016 and broadcasting to have finals in the morning sessions and a later start in the evening for a combination of broadcast reasons and to help with ticket sales.  We always want to work with organizers to produce schedules which meet their requirements and broadcast to reach global audiences. This is what we have tried to achieve in this case."

With this kind of result:

The Tuesday morning session ran to 25 — 25! — events. The list: that men’s triple jump final, the women’s discus throw final (won by Croatia’s Sandra Perkovic), rounds for the women’s pole vault and heats of the women’s 5,000m, men’s 1500, men’s 200 and women’s 100 hurdles.

The Tuesday evening affair included 19 different events, building toward the two key race finals, the women’s 1500m and the men’s 110m hurdles.

Compare: last Thursday evening at the pool, when Phelps won the 200m individual medley and Simone Manuel the women’s 100m freestyle, there were all of 10 races, four of which were finals. 

As for the women’s 1500: 

The men’s 100m is often called the “dirtiest race in track.” This appellation goes back to at least 1988 and Ben Johnson. 

Truth:

The women’s 1500 has historically proven way worse.

In the London 2012 women’s 1500m final, for instance, six of the top nine have been linked to performance-enhancing drugs. 

After Sunday’s women’s 1500m semifinal, American Jenny Simpson spoke out about Ethiopia’s Genzebe Dibaba, the world record holder in the event. Dibaba’s manager, the Somali Jama Aden, was arrested two months ago in Spain on suspicion of possessing doping products. Authorities have not accused Dibaba of any wrongdoing and after the Tuesday final she declared, through a translator, that she was "completely and crystal clean from doping."

Simpson had said after semifinals, “I think that you know a tree by the fruit that it bears. And if a tree bears sour frut, then the fruit around it are likely infected. And so I live my life that way in every way, not just through doping.”

In a reference to the World Anti-Doping Agency, she added, “And so I think that if WADA is on the case, they’ll find what they need to find. I hope so.”

Simpson finished third Tuesday night, in 4:10.53. She is the first American woman to medal in the 1500.

“The 1500m is unbelievably hard,” Simpson said late Tuesday. “And I’ve chosen to take on a challenge that I didn’t know if I could do it. There are moments where I thought, ‘Why am I here? Running 1500m is so hard.’ To take a piece of history — I don’t know, I sat down with my coaches … in 2013, and I told them I wanted to leave a mark on this sport that everyone in America could be proud of.

“I wanted to race as hard as I could, and be clean, and be someone that people could really be proud to cheer for.”

Dibaba took second, 4:10.27.

Kenya’s 22-year-old Faith Kipyegon, silver medalist behind Dibaba at last year’s world championships, won the race, in 4:08.92.

The stadium was maybe one-quarter full.

Allyson Felix on being just shy: 'It's just painful'

RIO de JANEIRO — What a tropical scene there was Monday noon time here at the 2016 Olympic Games. At Copacabana, for instance, the smell of coconut milk mixed with hot-out-of-the-oil-fries, the background to a visual tableau featuring the dental flossiest of bikinis and the waves lapping gently on the sugary sand.

Then, as the knowing Brazilians called it, the sudoeste blew in, a cold wind — from, well, the southeast — bearing the mean grey line of clouds signaling a major frente fria, a cold front with maybe days of rain. This is the Southern Hemisphere winter tropical version of what Americans on the East Coast would know as a nor’easter.

At Olympic Park, seven people, including two children, were injured when an overhead television camera tied to overhead cables crashed to the ground.

At Olympic Stadium, the wind — estimated by officials at between 60 and 90 kilometers per hour, 37 to 55 mph — toppled railings, tore at banners and more. About 50 minutes before the fourth night of the Rio 2016 track and field program got underway, the rain started coming down in sheets, straight down, then sideways. The men’s pole vault and women’s discus competitions: thanks but another day.

For those who believe in portents: all of this was maybe a sign of the storm clouds on the horizon for the American star Allyson Felix in the last race of the night, the women’s 400.

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Giving Justin Gatlin what he's due: respect

RIO de JANEIRO — Life can be complicated. To try to make sense of it, all people tell each other stories. For Americans, the story of redemption is arguably the national narrative — the manifest destiny to overcome and make a difference in our world. Think of a jillion episodes of Oprah or Dr. Phil. Or even presidential campaigning: George W. Bush on the campaign trail a few years back, declaring he had been “born again” after years of drinking.

Usain Bolt won the men’s 100m on Sunday night.

But Justin Gatlin — give the man his due. He deserves recognition and respect.

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The three-act Bolt carnival, back on track

RIO de JANEIRO — Maybe, in the dawn before time, there was a human specimen who, racing away or toward the likes of sabertooth tigers or wooly mammoths, could run for all he was worth and do it really, really fast.  

For now, we have Usain Bolt.

Adding to his legend, Bolt roared to gold in the men’s 100m Sunday night at Olympic Stadium, crossing the line in 9.81 seconds.

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The ups and downs of 'hardest team to make'

EUGENE — As Sunday’s final-day action at historic Hayward Field got underway, the crowd was told — this is the mantra of the 2016 Trials — that the U.S. Olympic track and field team is “the hardest team to make.” It’s not. The swim team is way harder. But more on that in a moment.

What is indisputably true: the 10-day run of the Trials is a study in emotion. One, two or three in Eugene is typically cause for joy. What, though, about four, five or farther down?

Amid all the celebrating, and there was plenty of it Sunday with nine finals that saw the likes of teenager Sydney McLaughlin (third place, women’s 400 hurdles, first 16-year-old on the U.S. team in 40 years) and 21-year-old Byron Robinson (second, men’s 400 hurdles) secure Rio spots, the real story of the Trials is, and always will be, disappointment.

And how to handle it.

Track and field’s global governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations, had reconfigured the Rio 2016 schedule so that Allyson Felix could try for the 200-400 double. Here, Felix won the 400. On Sunday, though, she finished fourth in the 200, one-hundredth of a second out.

“Honestly, I’m disappointed,” Felix said. “All year I planned for this race, and for it to end here, it’s disappointing. But when I look back and see everything that happened,” in particular an ankle injury this spring, “I still think it’s quite amazing that I was able to make this team. I feel like everything was against me.”

The tension and drama of the Trials makes for a once-evey-four-years study in how to handle what life gives you — or throws at you.

As Jenny Simpson, the Daegu 2011 world championship gold medalist who on Sunday won a ferocious women’s 1500 in 4:04.74, put it, “On the starting line, you have that balance of confidence and doubt,” adding that track and field is, and has to be, a "really selfish sport — it’s you against the world.”

She added, “The selection process makes you go through the fire,” adding in a reference to the Trials, “The gift we get from this really horrible and brutal experience is that when we get to the Games we have a sense we have done something difficult already and we are prepared.”

Erik Kynard, the 2012 Trials runner-up in the high jump, went to London and won silver. Here Sunday, he won the 2016 Trials. Asked what he learned from 2012, he said, with a laugh, “Jump higher.”

Robinson, after the 400 hurdles, “I’m shellshocked. I’m overcome with joy.” He also said, “I just wanted a chance, you know?”

Generally speaking, top-three at the track and field Trials go to the Games. Everyone else stays home.

With all due respect to Charles Barkley, and his assertion that sports stars are not role models — sorry, they are. That’s the case all the more in track and field; participation in track and field in high school and college remains robust.

“Knowing we’re doing it right, knowing we’re doing it the right way — hopefully we’re inspiring young women,” said Shannon Rowbury, the Berlin 2009 worlds bronze medalist who took second in Sunday’s women’s 1500 in 4:05.39.

Math makes plain that roughly nine of 10 of those who showed up here to compete in Eugene will not be heading to Rio. But it’s even harder to make the U.S. swim team.

Some numbers:

The swim Trials, in Omaha this month, held 52 spots. In swimming, moreover, qualifying is, again speaking generally, not top-three; it’s top two.

Because of doubles or even triples — the likes of Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky and Maya DiRado will each compete in multiple events in Rio — the field of 52 going to Rio will actually be 45.

That’s out of 1,737 entries, according to USA Swimming.

Math: 2.5 percent of those in Omaha are heading to Rio.

In track and field, there are 141 spots, including relays.

Not all spots get filled because Americans will not have met qualifying standards set by track’s global governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations.

By meet’s end, per USA Track & Field, there were 1,077 declared entries, 879 individual athletes.

To make the math as apples-to-apples as possible, and acknowledging that 141 is a loose number — 141 over 1,077 is 13.1 percent.

When you’re part of that magical 13 percent, it’s easy.

“I couldn’t ask for more,” Tori Bowie, the women’s 200-meter winner, said after Sunday’s racing. She took third in the 100, and now gets to double in Rio.

“I can’t believe this is happening right now,” the teenager McLaughlin said, adding a moment later, “My mind was on finishing the race and eating a cheeseburger.”

When you’re not?

Compare and contrast:

In the women’s 800 last Monday, Alysia Montaño fell on the final backstretch. She wailed. She fell to her knees. She cried.

This made for great TV.

At the same time, if a junior-high or high school athlete did this, what would the likely reaction be from his or her coach?

Meeting the press after with 2-year-old daughter, Linnea, in tow, Montaño said, “This is it, you know. You get up and you’re, like, really far away and your heart breaks.”

From there, it turned into something akin to a therapy session, Montaño saying her “biggest struggle this year” had been “finding peace and why I’m even trying for an Olympic team,” calling it all that “emotional baggage.”

Montaño was justifiably lauded two years ago when, 34 weeks pregnant, she ran the 800 at the U.S. national championships — a role model, for sure, on many levels.

Here?

“Eight years of my life as a professional runner, my entire professional career, has been a farce, basically,” she said. “Now everyone’s talking about the Russians not running in the Olympics but they’re missing the point. The IAAF is a corrupt institution that is still running the Games.”

It wasn’t until a day later that Montaño — who is active on social media and says her fans help her “pick up the pieces” — filed this to Twitter, congratulating Kate Grace, Ajee’ Wilson and Chrishuna Williams, who finished 1-2-3 in the race:

https://twitter.com/AlysiaMontano/status/750476446796124160

The sequence that sent Monaño to the track also took out Brenda Martinez. She won bronze at the 2013 Moscow worlds in the 800.

Martinez would say after the 2016 Trials 800, “I felt great but I got clipped from behind. That’s track and field. I’ve got to get ready for the 1500. Some days it doesn’t go your way. Today it was me.”

Instant-karma department: on Sunday, Martinez got third in the 1500, by three-hundredths of a second, finishing in 4:06.16. She got there with a finish-line dive.

“However people want to take it,” Martinez said. “I feel like it had to happen for a reason. That’s the way I believe life works, you know: you’re going to get tested. If people can see what I went through, then maybe they won’t doubt themselves the next time something happens to them.”

Make no mistake: Martinez’s third was very popular, with the crowd, with Rowbury and Simpson and with many others.

Simpson made a point of saying she had reached out after the 800 to Martinez. And for all that there is in, and justifiably, in being “selfish,” Simpson said, “I went to the starting line with a little bit more love … and a litttle bit less selfishness than in the past.”

Emma Coburn, the steeplechase winner here, posted to Twitter:

https://twitter.com/emmajcoburn/status/752293842729054208

In London four years ago, Leo Manzano won silver in the men’s 1500. He was the first American to medal in the 1500 since Jim Ryun in 1968.

On Sunday in the rain, Manzano, battling Ben Blankenship for the third and final spot in the 1500, reached for a gear he had often found before. It wasn’t there. Manzano took fourth, in 3:36.62 — not even half a second behind Blankenship, 3:36.18.

Matthew Centrowitz won the race, and easily, in 3:34.09. Robby Andrews got second, 3:34.88.

The race proved the fastest Trials 1500 ever, Centrowitz breaking Steve Scott’s 1980 Trials mark, 3:35.15, and the top-four putting down the Trials’ quickest top-four times.

In the London 1500, Centrowitz took fourth. “I'm ready for whatever they throw at me in Rio,” he said Sunday. “If it’s a 3:33 race, I’m ready for that.”

Manzano: “I wish the result had been different. Unfortuantely, it’s not. You’ve got to face the facts, and congratulte your teammates. They fought hard today. It wasn’t my day today.”

In the men’s 110-meter hurdles, Aries Merritt won bronze at last year’s world championships in Beijing, running on kidneys that were so bad he underwent a transplant — his sister the donor. Merritt is the 2012 London gold medalist and, as well, the world record holder in the event, 12.8.

In Saturday’s 110 hurdle final, Merritt finished fourth — like Felix in the 200, exactly one-hundredth away from third. He crossed in 13.22 seconds. Jeff Porter and Ronnie Ash went 3-2, both in 13.21; University of Oregon star Devon Allen ran away with the event, 13.03.

Merritt afterward: “Given the circumstances, I did the best I could with what I had and I came up a little bit short. I’ve come to grips with it. But it couldn’t be worse than being told you’ll never run again. I’ve been to the Olympics, I’ve won the Olympic Games, I’ve broken the world record. I mean, someone else can have a turn.”

In that same race, Jason Richardson finished fifth, in 13.28. He is the London silver medalist and the Daegu 2011 world champion.

His reaction:

https://twitter.com/JaiRich/status/751951488054808576

Jillian Camarena-Williams, a two-time Olympian, is 34. She and her husband, Dustin, 38, who will be the head trainer for the U.S. track team in Rio, married after the Berlin 2009 world championships. They moved to Tucson after the 2011 worlds. Their daughter, Miley, was born on the very day of the women’s shot put event at the 2014 championships in Sacramento.

“Our relationship is all about track meets,” she said, laughing.

The thing is — it’s not.

Camarena-Williams herniated her back at the London Games. She needed surgery. Then she had to decide — should I try to come back? If so, why?

The answers:

“I missed the sport and the people that are in it, the people that have helped me throughout my career,” she said in a quiet moment Sunday.

She also talked about what she called “my journey.”

Track brought her a husband and now a family: "It’s more about the places we were able to go, people we were able to meet than the outcome. I have talked to young people and brought my medals,” including a third in Daegu in 2011, the first medal of any kind for an American woman in the shot in the history of the track worlds.

“I love these medals. They represent that journey to me. But they just sit in my drawer. They don’t hang in our house. We’re porud of them. But we’re way more exicted about the things we were able to do along the way than the actual hardware.”

After the third throw — of six — here, in the rain, Camarena-Wiilliams stood third. But she knew it wouldn’t be enough.

Heading out for her final throw, in round six, Camarena-Williams’ sister, 36-year-old sister, Christi, a nurse in Sacramento, told her, “Just smile. Go out there and enjoy yourself.”

Michelle Carter, on her sixth and final throw, won, in 19.59 meters, 64 feet, 3-1/4 inches. Raven Saunders and Felisha Johnson finished 2-3. Camarena-Williams ended at 18.81, 61 8-1/2.

A lot of family was here in Eugene for Jillian and Dustin. Her mother. Two of her three siblings. A cousin with her two daughters. His brother. Two sets of his aunts and uncles.

Coaches.

And, of course, 2-year-old Miley.

“It’s a village that supports us to get [to the Olympics] in the first place,” Rowbury would observe. “It’s a commitment to trying to be the best you can be, a commitment to the people who support you along the way and a commitment to honor your country.”

"No matter what I do in life," Robinson said, "if the people back home aren’t proud of me I know that I didn’t really live up to expectations. Knowing that they are behind me, I know I can achieve anything."

After Jillian Camarena-Williams' final throw, no tears. She went looking for her husband and their daughter.

“Sometimes,” she said Sunday, holding the baby, “you are overtaken with emotion. So much can happen. I feel like I’m in a really good place with our family and where we’re at. It was disappointing, but I have to put a smile on my face and be grateful for what we have, outside the track.

“And we have a lot.”

Speaking up about what is so obviously right

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

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

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

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

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

This ignores reality.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We need more of this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No one is saying that is an imperative.

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

With that comes opportunity.

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

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

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

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

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

On Saturday, she posted to Twitter:

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

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

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

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

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

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

And this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The flag fluttered softly in the breeze Saturday at Hayward.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How to make the Trials (even) better

EUGENE — Now we know exactly how many super-hard core track geeks there are in this little college town, the self-proclaimed track capital of the United States: 2900. That’s how many people showed up Wednesday to watch the women’s hammer throw inside historic Hayward Field.

For the men’s hammer, later Wednesday, the crowd swelled to 4200.

Look, they tried. Again, the hammer throw took place inside Hayward. That’s called thinking out of the box.

As these 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials move past the halfway mark, the meet — indeed, the experience — has by almost any measure not only met but surpassed expectations. Until a cloudy and then rainy Thursday, even the weather had cooperated — Oregon’s high blue skies providing a brilliant canopy for the tableau below, and performances like Justin Gatlin’s best-in-the-world-in-2016 9.80 seconds in the men’s 100 meters.

Even so, with the spotlight on for the second half of the meet, now is not the time to declare that all in the track and field universe is well.

Because these Trials, aiming toward the 2016 Olympics and beyond, to the 2021 world champioships back at a refurbished Hayward, are just the start.

Now is precisely the time, amid the glow of these Trials, to think about how — in the interest of making track and field that much more viable — to make the next editions of the Trials, in 2020 and 2024, that much more attractive.

For emphasis, these Trials have left little to be desired. Don’t have a ticket? Come watch on the big screen behind Hayward and listen to a live band. Not in Eugene and want to watch? Livestreams galore.

Even so, the U.S. track and field Trials could be so much more.

For starters, this meet not only could — but should — be six days, not 10.

For another, fairness and decency — along with TV appeal — demand a review of any number of standards, in particular field sizes and qualifying procedures, both for the Trials and the Olympics themselves.

Case in point:

Rudy Winkler, a 21-year-old college kid from Cornell who competes in Clark Kent-style glasses, won the men’s hammer, with a throw of 76.76, or 251-10. He does not know whether he will be invited to go to Rio. That’s not only counter-intuitive but insane.

The reason: the complexity of track and field’s rules. At the Games, there’s a field of 32, per the sport’s international governing body, the International Assn. of Athletics Federations. No American thrower, pre-Trials or at the meet, met the Olympic qualifying standard. Now Winkler, and the 2-3-4 finishers, must wait to see whether they get a Rio invite.

Another example:

In men’s javelin, both Cyrus Hostetler and Curtis Thompson broke the meet record in going 1-2. Hostler is Rio bound. Thompson — not.

Normally, of course, it’s top three.

But Thompson doesn’t have the Olympic qualifying standard, 83 meters, 272-3. He threw 82.88, 271-11, a lifetime best. And 12 centimeters short.

Riley Dolezal was third, 79.67, 261-4. Third is good. But not, in this instance, good enough for the Olympics.

Hostetler went 83.24, 273-1. So he’s good.

So is Sam Crouser, who took fourth, with 78.06, 256-1. He had the standard coming in.

Who else is good? Sean Furey, who took 11th, with 69.45, 227-10. That’s nearly 45 feet back. But Furey met the standard in June 2015.

So — first, fourth and 11th are en route to Rio.

How is any part of that supposed to make sense to the average person or the would-be fan?

A couple more examples:

But for a handful of athletes, the women’s hammer throw amounted essentially to an all-comers meet. That’s fine for an all-comers meet. But not the Trials.

On Thursday, they ran three first-round heats of the women’s 1500. This gets a little complicated.

There were three flights of 10. Three dropped out before the start, for various reasons — Kate Grace won the 800 and passed on the 1500, for instance. So 27 women raced for 24 spots in Friday’s semifinals. One of the three who ended up not making it: Sarah Brown, who gave birth just four months ago, seemingly her every move here being documented by a film crew.

A crash in the first heat knocked down Alexa Efraimson and Rachel Schneider. They got up and ended up qualifying on time, 4:14.4 and 4:22.94. Brenda Martinez, who got tangled up with Alysia Montaño in Monday’s 800 and didn’t make top-three in that event, won the second heat in 4:23. Then came the absurdity of the third round: 10 women, each of whom had run 4:10 or faster just to make the Trials, had to run just 4:22 to advance.

In sum — that third heat of 10 eliminated no one.

That’s beyond silly.

As for the three heats Monday in the women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase — after just two laps in each round, a sizable margin had opened up between the leaders and stragglers. Again, these are the Trials, supposed to be a test of the best.

What needs to be struck: the balance between the Trials between a culminating high-performance event and the kind of thing where people get to go home and say, I took part at the Trials.

The approriate revisions could, would, should and ought to bring all the drama of the Trials to the place it should be — the Trials.

Like Thursday’s women’s steeple final. Emma Coburn won, in the sixth-fastest time ever, 9:17.48. At the bell lap, Stephanie Garcia had been second. She ended up tripping on the final barrier and finished fifth. Courtney Frerichs, 9:20.92, and Colleen Quigley, 9:21.29, went 2-3.

Like the women’s shot put earlier Thursday: Michelle Carter, one of the sport’s class acts, won on the final throw, 19.59 meters, 64 feet 3 1/4 inches, to qualify for her third Olympics.

Also Thursday, the heats in the women’s 100 hurdles. Coming into the U.S. Trials, 11 of the top 15 performers this year had been Americans. Keni Harrison, the American record holder (12.24 here in Eugene in late May), went 12.57 in the first heat. In the fifth, 2013 world champion Brianna Rollins, the former record holder (12.26, 2013 U.S. championships), went 12.56.

Whether the 2020 Trials are here in Eugene remains an open question. The 2000 and 2004 Trials were in Sacramento; the 2017 national champioships will be there, too. Even so, in preparation for 2021, the odds would have to favor being in Eugene in 2020 — just as in 2008 and 2012 as well.

For 2024, much depends on whether Los Angeles wins those 2024 Summer Games. The International Olympic Committee will pick the 2024 winner in September 2017 at a meeting in Lima, Peru. Also in the field: Paris, Rome and Budapest.

Looking ahead, the big-picture audience is not Eugene. Or, just to be obvious, those 2900 people.

The mission has to be how to grow track and field beyond the geeks.

This has been the avowed goal of both Max Siegel, chief executive of USA Track & Field, and Vin Lananna, president of the local Eugene organizing entity, called TrackTown, who is also head coach of the U.S. 2016 men’s track and field team.

As Lananna put it, it’s to “really grow the awareness of today’s track and field heroes” nationwide.

Siegel, in a news conference Tuesday, noted that when he took over four years ago, he had two overarching goals for USATF — organizational stability and driving innovation.

Stability: USATF’s annual budget is now $36 million, twice what it was four years ago.

Now it’s time to delve, big time, into the innovation.

Part of this involves changing the three-ring circus atmosphere that attends far too many meets, including the Trials.

On Thursday, for instance, the men’s triple jump prelims, with 2012 Olympic champion Christian Taylor, were being run at the same time as the heats — over on the track, literally a few feet to the right — of the women’s 100 hurdles. Same issue later Thursday: on the track, women’s 400 hurdles  and, in the infield, men’s discus and run-throughs for the women’s triple jump.

Pick a day, almost any day, and it’s the same challenge: on Sunday, the men’s long jump competed for attention with the women’s high jump, featuring 32-year-old Chaunte Lowe and teen sensation Vashti Cunningham.

For the average fan, this presents a logical dilemma: where to look, and when?

Part of the solution: tighter scripting of the show flow. That's what this is. It's a show.

Part of it, too, involves reconfiguring the meet as entertainment. Again, that’s what it is. The purists are still going to show — how about a little 21st-century reach-out?

The swim Trials, just concluded in Omaha, featured fireworks, a waterfall, a sound-and-light show, individual athlete introductions, rock music and showtime bits on the big screen that the sold-out audience ate up — ongoing banter between pool-deck hosts (and former Olympic medalists) Brendan Hansen and Kaitlin Sandeno and, most nights, a crowd dance-off.

Here — brief athlete intros, yes. The rest? Why not?

At NFL games, there’s a flying camera. Here, no. Why not?

Track and field is statistics-heavy. Like football, baseball and, in the Olympic context, swimming. Yet at the swim Trials officials make readily available a day-of-event listing that provides individual athlete biographies as well as essentials such as records and Olympic histories.

The track Trials — no such thing. Why not?

Moreover, there is no iPhone or Google Play app that would make, say, such stats and results immediately availble to fans in the stands. Why not? It’s 2016, not 1972.

And then the production glitches that you’d think should be so obvious — at these Trials, the loud music from that soundstage frequently drowns out news conferences in the media tent just feet away. All sports, and particularly track and field, depend on story-telling. How to tell those stories when you can’t hear a word?

This problem was exactly the same in 2012. Complaints must have fallen on deaf ears. Maybe from that music.

For all these observations, the biggest thing that needs to be assessed is the length and scheduling of the meet.

This means both the daily and overall runs.

An evening at the swim Trials runs to two hours, maybe just a little more.

Consider Thursday’s Hayward schedule. It is profoundly unrealistic to expect the average fan — maybe with kids in tow, and track and field assuredly wants to reach out to young people — to show up at 3:30 p.m. and stay until roughly 8 p.m., when the women’s steeplechase wrapped up.

After nearly a week of brilliant weather, the rain arrived Thursday in Eugene. That didn’t help. But it rained during the 2012 Trials, too, and it’s simple common-sense that rain in Oregon is always a distinct possibility.

In non-Olympic years, meanwhile, the U.S. outdoor championship runs to only four days.

The Trials go on for 10, with a formal off-day in the middle.

If the reason for that is to benefit hotels, restaurants, bars and the Eugene Chamber of Commerce — that’s not a good reason. This is a track meet, not a convention.

If the idea is to mimic the Olympic schedule — the four-day meet produces world championship teams that win plenty of medals over the more-extended run.

These Trials started, sort of, last Thursday with a 20-kilometer walk in Salem, the state capital. The formal opening ceremony took place last Friday here at Hayward.

So: Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

Off-day Tuesday.

Wednesday: hammer throw, women’s and men’s.

Now the final four days: Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

If four days is unrealistic for a Trials, there’s no good reason not to consider shrinking 10 days to six. Doing so would considerably reduce costs for virtually all stakeholders: athletes, fans, officials, the local organizing committee, USATF, TV, media and, not incidentally, law enforcement and security.

Six days is eminently do-able. Here is one plan of how it could work:

Day One and Two: 100, 400 as well as prelims in 800. The 10k could go on One, heats of the 5k on Two.

Day Three and Four: 400 final, 400 hurdles prelims, 200 prelims, 1500, 800 finals.

Day Five and Six: 200, 400 hurdles, 1500 and 5k finals.

Decathlon: Days One and Two. Heptathlon: Four and five.

Steeple: Days One and Three, Four and Six (men’s/women’s, or vice-versa).

Javelin:  One and Three, Four and Six.

Discus: Two and Three, Four and Five.

Hammer: One and Two, Five and Six.

Triple jump: One and Two, Three and Four.

High jump: Two and Three, Five and Six.

Long jump: Three and Four, Five and Six.

Pole Vault: One and Two, Four and Five.

Shot put: Five.

This does not need to be rocket science. Track and field is a sleeping giant. But like most things, it would work better with a heaping dose of common sense.

Change for better at USATF: believe it

EUGENE — Jackie Joyner-Kersee is arguably the greatest female American track and field athlete of all time. Competing across four editions of the Olympics in the long jump and the heptathlon, she won six medals, three gold. Before Max Siegel took over as chief executive of USA Track & Field, Jackie Joyner-Kersee had never — repeat, never — been invited to USATF headquarters in Indianapolis.

Let that sink in for a moment.

“I don’t want to believe the design was to leave people on the outside,” Joyner-Kersee said here amid the 2016 U.S. Olympic Trials. “It was just business as usual. It became normal. You think that is the way it is supposed to be.”

Culture change is about the most difficult thing there is to effect, all the more so in the Olympic sports sphere.

At work now — in real time — is a profound culture shift for the better at USATF, which is, as Siegel put it Tuesday, both the economic engine and the governing body of track and field in the United States.

Of course there are critics, non-believers, doomsayers.

All constructive criticism is more than welcome, Siegel observing that such observations can “point out our weaknesses” and thus be “really healthy for us.” He added, “People should continue to express their criticism, their concern and hopefully their praise for the organization.”

To be sure, USATF is far from perfect. No institution is perfect. No institution can ever be perfect.

At the same time, praise where praise is due:

USATF, long the most-dysfunctional federation in the so-called U.S. “Olympic family,” has — in the four years since Siegel took over — taken concrete, demonstrative steps to become a leader in the field.

True — by virtually any metric.

Joyner-Kersee: “Change is hard. Most of the time, you don’t see change until years down the road. But there are certain things that are being put in place where, at the beginning, you might not understand why. But when the moment comes, you see it’s working out.”

For the first time in recent memory, these 2016 Trials are what they should be: a commemoration of the sport’s vibrant past as well as a well-run production at go time with an eye toward the future, in particular the 2021 world championships, back here at historic Hayward Field.

The evidence is all around Hayward, and Eugene:

Here was John Carlos, the legend from the 1968 Mexico City Olympics, singing autographs.

Here was Adam Nelson being presented the 2004 Athens Games shot put gold medal in a Hayward ceremony. Nelson, who had initially finished second, was moved up to gold when Ukraine’s Yuri Bilonoh was, to little surprise, confirmed a doper. In 2016, Nelson got what he deserved — a ceremony before thousands cheering for him, and for competing clean. Then he went out and tried to qualify for the 2016 team, making the finals and finishing seventh. All good for a guy who on Thursday turns 41.

https://twitter.com/AdamMcNelson/status/748907838584463362

https://twitter.com/ryanmfenton/status/750129069384019968

Here, during the next-to-last lap during a prelim in the men’s 5,000, came the javelin champion Cyrus Hosteler — waving an American flag, racing exuberantly down the curve and the homestretch in the outside lane while the pack zipped by on the inside.

Here, too, behind Hayward have been hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids racing in the “little sprinters” section. Or outside the stadium — kids and grown-ups trying their luck at throwing the shot.

All of it amid the county-fair smell of kettle corn, and under brilliant blue skies.

Vin Lananna, president of TrackTown, the local organizers, who is as well the 2016 U.S. Olympic track team men's head coach, said much strategizing had gone into what he called two “common themes — bringing the athletes into close contact with the fans and introducing as many boys and girls to running, jumping and throwing as possible.”

He also said, “It is my hope that by shining a spotlight on certain events, by working hard to attract boys and girls to the sport, and by celebrating the amazing heritage of our athletes at these 2016 Olympic Trials, that we’ll really grow the awareness of today’s track and field heroes in the mind of Americans.

“And I hope that by 2021, when the world comes to Oregon for the IAAF world championships, the stars of Team USA are household names. I’m sure that on the final night of these Trials we’ll be strategizing about what next steps we can take to make that happen.”

At this point, the skeptic cries — wait. NBC sent Bob Costas to Omaha last week for the swim Trials. There Costas interviewed the stars Michael Phelps and Katie Ledecky.

Is Costas in Eugene? No.

Then again, on Sunday alone, U.S. athletes set seven world-leading marks; the hashtag “#TrackTown16” trended globally on Twitter; the USATF production team launched its first Snapchat story; and three of the five top trending items on Facebook were the U.S. track stars Allyson Felix, LaShawn Merritt and Justin Gatlin.

USATF will send a team of roughly 125 athlete to Rio, roughly a quarter of the entire U.S. delegation. Halfway through these Trials, 50 track and field athletes have been named. Of those 50, 35 are first-time Olympians. In these disciplines all three qualifiers will be first-timers: men’s and women’s 800; men’s pole vault, men’s long jump, women’s discus.

It’s all quite a change from four years ago.

Siegel had just taken over just weeks before as CEO. The 2012 Trials were marked by a bizarre dead-heat in the women’s 100 that became a worldwide source of ridicule. Plus, there was the weather.

As Siegel said Tuesday in a state-of-the-sport news conference, “It is a lot different for me. It was raining and I was in the middle of a dead heat a couple weeks on the job.”

Lots of things are indisputably a lot different.

First and foremost, USATF used to run with an annual budget of roughly $16 to $18 million. This year, it’s $36 million — the product of 17 new deals in the past 48 months, including 12 new corporate partnerships.

Has USATF figured out how to make track athletes the kind of money NFL or NBA players get?

No.

But, working in collaboration with its athletes’ council, chaired by long jump champion Dwight Phillips, for the first time an athlete who makes the U.S. national team gets $10,000 along with bonuses of up to $25,000 for Olympic gold medals. That’s all in addition to dollars that can come from the U.S. Olympic Committee.

Does that automatically make a track star a millionaire? No.

Is it a start? Yes. Just “scratching the surface,” Siegel said.

And, as Siegel pointed out, it’s reasonable to ask whether it’s fair to compare, on the one hand, track and field with, on the other, the NBA or NFL.

The pro leagues are for-profit enterprises. Moreover, they are unionized.

USATF is a not-for-profit entity. Plus, its charge is to serve not only elite athletes but also a variety of grass-roots programs.

“The conversation gets a little cloudy when people have whatever their personal definition is about sharing money with athletes,” he said. “If you host an event that gives an athlete a platform, some would say that’s not money in the athlete’s pocket. But someone needs to fund those things.”

Which leads directly to the central point.

When he took over, Siegel said, he saw two primary objectives: to effect organizational stability and to drive innovation.

Another innovation nugget: Wednesday’s hammer throw competition, to be held inside Hayward, will be available via desktop, tablet, mobile and connected TV devices. Here is the livestream link for the women's competition. And the men's.

Most important:

For the first time in maybe ever, USATF can pronounce itself stable.

Nothing — repeat, nothing — is possible without that stability, and anyone who is being reasonable would have to acknowledge that much of the criticism that attends USATF comes from those who for years have accepted intense variability as part of the landscape, often seeking to leverage that instability in the pursuit of petty politics or otherwise.

Before Siegel took over, Nelson said, “No one trusted the leadership,” adding, “When that trust is broken, a power grab goes on.”

He also said, “There is a culture change happening. There have been major changes at work at USATF in the last four years.”

Hawi Keflezeghi, the agent whose clients include Boris Berian, runner-up in the men’s 800, recently sent Siegel an email — quoted here with permission — that said, in part, “Your commitment to elite athletes through the high performance program is evident & greatly appreciated,” adding, “Thank you for all your efforts & leadership.”

Keflezighi, in an interview, said, speaking generally about the state of the sport, “If you are quick to criticize, be quick to acknowledge the good that is going on, too. Be objective enough to see it.”

Nelson, referring both to track and field generally and USATF specifically, said, “This is a family, and I genuinely mean that — even when a family fights, even when a family disagrees.

“But for a family to survive, you have to find ways to break down those barriers and re-establish communication.”

This is the key to Siegel’s style. And why USATF is on the upswing.

For students of management, he alluded to four different facets of his way in his Tuesday remarks.

One: “My style is not to discuss [in the press] things that are happening or resolutions that need to be made in the privacy of business.”

If you think that means he’s not transparent — wrong. All in, Siegel spent 50 minutes Tuesday at the lectern, half of that answering any and all questions. Beyond which, the USATF website holds the answer to almost every organizational or financial question.

Two, he and chief operating officer Renee Washington place a tremendous emphasis on — as much as possible — working collaboratively with the many stakeholders in the USATF universe.

The athlete revenue distribution — or sharing, if you like — plan?

“We worked collaboratively and painstakingly and long, and put in a collective effort with [the athlete council] … to come up with a system that was fair,” Siegel said, adding, “We continue to work in a fluid manner to improve it.”

Three, Siegel and Washington are quick to credit others.

USATF staffers, he said, “work tirelessly, are equally as passionate, care about the sport and wake up every day trying to do the best job possible.”

At Tuesday’s event, he singled out, among others in the room, Duffy Mahoney and Robert Chapman in the high performance division; and the four-time Olympian Aretha Thurmond, who has the complex job of overseeing logistics, travel and uniforms for international teams.

Too, he said, “I can not say enough about our partners at TrackTown and the city of Eugene.”

Four, Siegel can approach problems with either a macro or micro approach — whichever is, depending on the situation, most appropriate.

Micro: “We have been trying really hard to pay attention to small details that people don’t see,” he said, down to the way team uniforms get packed in the bags, with care and attention, evidence of “what it feels like to be treated with dignity and respect and the kind of importance that an athlete deserves.”

Macro: “For us as a community, for all of us who really love track and field, who would love to see the sport grow, it is not rocket science: people have to want to consume the product. You have to have people who are willing to buy tickets to the event, sponsors who are willing to spend money, people who are willing to spend merchandise.

“As a community, I would love to change the tone of our conversation. To figure out, OK — true, this is where we are falling short. But what do we do as a community to make sure that our sport is front and center with all the other properties out there?”

Change can be hard. But it can also be good. When it's right in front of your face, you just have to see which way it's pointing, Joyner-Kersee saying, “With that change, now you have athletes wanting to know: where is the office?”