Gay, Lagat shine at Track and Field Championships

	Tyson Gay, an early favorite for next year's Olympics, won the 100 by 0.23 seconds. Andy Lyons/Getty Images
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INDIANAPOLIS -- Two days of finals in the books. Time to run an old-fashioned two-mile around the USA Track and Field national championships. Eight laps: We'll let Tyson Gay start and Bernard Lagat finish. Beat that.

Lap 1

Gay has officially gapped the domestic 100-meter field. Even after running 9.84 last year and finishing second in Zurich to Asafa Powell of Jamaica in one of Powell's two world record-equaling 9.77-second runs, Gay, 24, did not come into this season regarded as a dominant short sprinter. That changed Friday night.

Gay won his first national title with a laughably dominant performance, running a PR-equaling 9.84 into a 0.5 meters-per-second headwind, the second-fastest 100 ever run into a negative wind (behind Maurice Greene's 9.82 into a negative 0.2 at the 2001 World Championships in Edmonton). Gay finished .23 seconds in front of second-place finisher Trinidon Holliday of LSU; it is the widest margin of victory since fully automatic timing was instituted in 1975.

Gay can now chase Powell and the world record. "The prefect time [to get the record] would be at the World Championships,'' said Gay.

On Friday night, he did something more important to the sport of track: He made people stop talking about the absent and drug-suspended Justin Gatlin. At least for a night.

Lap 2

One more thought on Gay: You've got to figure he's going to be nasty in the 200 meters on Sunday afternoon. Much of the talk in this seriously buzzed-about race has centered on Gay's training partner, Wallace Spearmon, and Xavier Carter. Both deserve the hype. At 19.63, Carter is the second-fastest in history (behind Michael Johnson's towering 19.32 from Atlanta in '96), and at 19.65, Spearmon is third. Florida State junior Walter Dix ran 19.69 this spring to inject himself into the mix, although he is not expected to run here (however, since Dix changes his mind on such matters almost by the minute, there's no way to know for certain).

Gay is no half-lap slouch. He ran 19.68 and 19.70 a year ago and finished fourth behind a U.S. sweep at the 2005 Worlds in Helsinki. And with 9.84 speed into a negative wind? I'm just sayin' ...

Lap 3

Fair is fair. Torri Edwards tested positive for a stimulant in 2004, lost her final appeal on the eve of running the 100 meters at the Athens Olympic Games and didn't compete for the entire 2005 season. She was freed from her two-year suspension five months early, in November of 2005, when the drug she used, Nikethamide, was downgraded from a two-year ban to a public warning.

In the doping arena, we are quick to damn, whether it involves keeping Mark McGwire out of the Hall of Fame or raising an eyebrow at Edwards.

Edwards says she used Nikethamide unknowingly. The Court of Arbirtration for Sport agreed but suspended her under the letter of the rule. She never quit. "We cried together a lot of days," says her coach John Smith. "Her career went 'Pfft,' just like that, and she never stopped working."

Edwards won the 100 meters in 11.01 seconds into a steady headwind Friday night, and shot her right arm into the air as she crossed the finish line.

It's important to be diligent in assessing the work of drugged athletes. But they aren't all the same. Edwards paid heavily for a minor crime. Now she is back. Time to let it go.