U.S. Puts Vast Potential on Display at Worlds

Lauryn Williams likes to bunch her hair in two round puffs atop her head when she runs, mimicking the Mickey Mouse figure tattooed on her thigh.

The 21-year-old sprinter may be a child at heart, but she and her U.S. teammates again proved they can run with the big kids.

Williams was one of three U.S. athletes who won two gold medals at the world track and field championships, which ended Sunday. Williams won the 100-meter dash and anchored the 400-meter relay, Justin Gatlin pulled off the 100-200 sprint double, and 400-meter champion Jeremy Wariner closed the meet with a strong anchor leg on the 1,600-meter relay Sunday, giving the U.S. its team-record 14th gold medal.

With 25 medals overall, the U.S. team equaled the Athens Olympic team’s total and came within one of the top U.S. haul at a world championship, set in 1991. The total might have been greater if not for gaffes in the men’s 400-meter relay and the women’s 1,600-meter relay and if injuries hadn’t hobbled Olympic silver medalists Toby Stevenson and Meb Keflezighi.

“I’m really excited about the youth on the team,” Williams said. “The USA is young and has a lot of potential for growth.

“We’re doing this great at this age, and as we get older it should only get better.”

The relay bumbles aside, the U.S. team fared remarkably well in persistent rain, wind and cold. Leading the way were the youngsters who emerged at Athens and brought hope to a sport that’s still trying to dispel the clouds of doping scandals.

Not only did they reaffirm their supremacy, they expanded their ranks.

Bershawn Jackson, 22, didn’t earn an Olympic berth in the 400-meter hurdles but won gold here. Brad Walker, 24, didn’t make the Athens team but was the world pole vault runner-up. Rachelle Boone-Smith, 24, ran fifth in the 200 at the Olympic trials but won a silver medal this week behind 19-year-old teammate Allyson Felix. Tianna Madison, 19, also missed the Athens squad but won the long jump world title.

Sandra Glover, the 400-meter hurdles bronze medalist and, at 36, the oldest U.S. competitor who wasn’t a marathoner or a race walker, was awed by the youngsters.

“Wow. I tell you, they’re great,” Glover said. “That little 19-year-old Tianna, she still has more in the tank. I’m looking for her to do more really amazing things.

“Hopefully I’ll be in my rocking chair and I’ll be watching it on TV.”

Craig Masback, chief executive officer of USA Track and Field, said he calculated the gold medalists’ average age as 23.5 and the average age of all medalists as just over 24. “Those kinds of things are really exciting,” he said.

“Normally you might have a letdown after an Olympic Games, but you had a group of young athletes that are so exuberant that they want to do better each year, and I think we can expect a great year next year, and the year after that and the year after that. There’s no shortage of enthusiasm, and that’s a tremendous asset for us.”

He attributed the relay woes to misfortune, saying the runners had more practice “than we’ve ever done in all years of relay practice history.” He added, “If we don’t win four medals we’ve got work to do.

“I do want to say one thing, though. Nobody says, ‘Gee, you didn’t have any finalists in the 5,000 meters men’s or women’s.’ We hold the relays to the highest possible standard, and I accept that we should be good in the relays, but we have to be fair, as well.”

Masback also said he’d made progress in investigating a pre-competition incident involving younger and older members of the relay pool. Some of the young sprinters objected to their elders’ request to bring them sodas during a restaurant outing, and John Capel disparaged them as a “bunch of little punks.” Masback said the athletes had addressed it and that no additional problems had arisen.

“I think people were heavily sensitized to how wrong whatever happened was, so that it’s not going to happen again,” he said.

The final U.S. medal Sunday was hard-earned. With Christopher Brown of the Bahamas and Davian Clarke of Jamaica closing in, Wariner pulled away in the last 200 meters for a 43.55-second leg.

“We take so much pride in our relays, we had to go out there and prove that we could do what we’ve done in the past,” Wariner said after the quartet’s world-leading 2:56.91 performance.

The U.S. team’s success, he said, “shows that we compete year in and year out, no matter what the competition is.... We don’t take things for granted.”

Also of note, Britain’s Paula Radcliffe finally won a major marathon title, making a mid-race surge to win in a world championships-record 2 hours 20 minutes 57 seconds. Catherine Ndereba of Kenya was second in 2:22:01 and Constantina Tomescu of Romania was third in 2:23:19. Radcliffe, the marathon world-record holder, had dropped out of the 10,000 and marathon at Athens and was ninth in the 10,000 here.

Rashid Ramzi of Bahrain won the 800 in a personal-best 1:44.24 and became the first person to win the 800-1,500 double at the world championships. Unheralded Yuriy Krymaranko of Ukraine celebrated his 22nd birthday by winning the high jump, the only man to clear 7 feet 7 1/4 inches.

Osleidys Menendez of Cuba set a world record of 235-3 in winning the women’s javelin throw, and Tatyana Tomashova of Russia won her second straight 1,500 title, in 4:00.35.

Russia finished second to the U.S. in gold medals with seven and overall with 20 medals. Ethiopia was third with nine medals. Surprisingly, China won only a silver by 110-meter hurdler Liu Xiang.

“I would have thought we’d see a step forward here over Athens,” Masback said. “I still expect they’ll be very competitive in the technical events, pole vault, shotput, and some others by the time we get to Beijing.”

Masback also said he’s in the preliminary stage of arranging meets between the U.S. and Africa in April and between the U.S. and China in August but the sites haven’t been determined.