Women’s 100 goes to the tape

OSAKA, Japan -- Lauryn Williams is comfortable enough in her own skin that she used to braid her hair into buns to resemble Mickey Mouse ears. Yes, she liked the character, but the symbolism was obvious: Their body types are similar.

She no longer has the hairstyle, but Williams remains the mouse who roars in arenas that often intimidate the lions of her sport.

She did it again Monday, losing the women’s 100-meter final by a margin no wider than Mickey’s tail.

Every time it seems, for one reason or another, that the gap between her and the elite at the world championships or an Olympics is far larger, Williams closes it in about 11 seconds or less.

Williams is 5 feet 2.

The bigger the challenge, the taller she stands.

“The adrenaline gets rushing, and I just go,” Williams said. “Like the heart gets beating so fast and maybe it activates the fast-twitch muscles. There’s something about big meets. It’s do-or-die, and I did.”

Williams, 23, went from third at the 2004 U.S. Olympic trials to silver medalist at the Olympics, from third at the 2005 U.S. championships to world champion, from second at this year’s national meet to second in the world.

Since the 2005 worlds, Williams had grown progressively more frustrated with her inability to heal an injured hamstring in her left leg. Eleven U.S. women had run faster this season than Williams’ best of 11.11 seconds before this meet.

Monday, when just making the final was enough to wipe negative thoughts from her mind, Williams also enriched it, passing time before the race by lying on the warmup track and reading Lee Iacocca’s recent book, “Where Have All the Leaders Gone?”

She would be the leader for all but the final step. Williams clocked 11.01, same as winner Veronica Campbell of Jamaica. The decision was rendered by a photo that separated the two by thousandths of a second.

Inconsequentially small. Just the opposite of Lauryn Williams.

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Philip Hersh covers Olympic sports for The Times and the Chicago Tribune.

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Track and Field Championships

* Quote of the day: “I knew it was going to come down to the line. I knew I had to put in as much of my neck and arm and shoulder and anything possible.” -- U.S. sprinter Carmelita Jeter on leaning to win the bronze medal in the 100 meters.

* “Watch out for the U.S. boys in the final!” -- Bernard Lagat, who won his Monday semifinal, on the possibility of him or Alan Webb winning Wednesday’s final to become the first U.S. world champion in the metric mile. Webb, however, qualified with an unimpressive fifth in his semifinal.

* Monday’s (other) big event: The men’s 10,000 meters, in which Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia won his third consecutive world title. “At the end of a race, if you have good speed, you can win.” Bekele had it, coming from third at the bell and blistering the final lap in 53.5 seconds to finish in 27:05.90, the second-fastest 10,000 time in meet history despite an 86-degree temperature with 65% humidity.

* Today’s big event: The women’s 800, in which ageless Maria Mutola of Mozambique, 34, tries for a fifth title 14 years after she won her first.

-- Philip Hersh