Webb has struggled from tactical miscalculations

Alan Webb had a solid summer, breaking the U.S. mile record, but has struggled in Osaka. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

OSAKA, Japan -- Earlier this week, I climbed onto a shuttle bus from the U.S. team hotel at the world track and field championships, where I had been doing an interview with an athlete. The bus idling at the curb was the most efficient way to get the meandering 60 minutes through rush hour traffic to Osaka Nagai Stadium. Sitting three rows back along the aisle was 24-year-old U.S. 1,500-meter runner Alan Webb, who would run that evening in the semifinals of his event.

Athletes ride shuttle buses, too. I walked past and Webb held out his right hand for a quick shake, because we've known each other since I began writing about him seven years ago when he was a junior in high school. We are professional acquaintances; he the athlete and I the journalist. Webb smiled broadly -- to be honest, broadly is the only way Webb smiles -- and said, "Hey, what's up?" I offered a clever response: "Hey, not much." And took a seat in the back of the bus. This was not the time for small talk or improvised interviews.

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You have been subjected to this recollection because it came crashing back into my brain late Wednesday night in the painful minutes that followed the final of the 1,500 meters on the floor of Osaka Nagai Stadium. Bernard Lagat, 32, the Kenyan expatriate who was competing in his first world championships as a U.S. citizen, won the gold medal with a withering sprint finish. He wrapped himself in an American flag and thanked God for blessing his life.

Webb finished a struggling eighth and flogged himself relentlessly. Ninety-two hundredths of a second separated them at the finish, a time too brief to speak either of their names, yet long enough to decisively -- if not irretrievably -- alter their place in track and field history. Lagat, already in possession of Olympic bronze (2000) and silver (2004) medals, is now a world champion and the first U.S. gold medalist at any global championship since Mel Sheppard at the 1908 Olympic Games. Webb is the fast prodigy who can't win medals. That's harsh medicine, but nobody knows its truth better than Webb.

Back to the shuttle bus: The guy who shook my hand on that bus was full of life and possibility. He has run brilliantly fast this summer, adding the U.S. mile record (3:46.91) to his epic high school record from 2001. He has done workouts that shook the digital watch, and seemed poised to get a medal in these championships. The winning time in Osaka was four seconds slower than his seasonal best, well within his reach. That guy is gone for now, aged by one experience and pounded into indecision.

It is wrong to bury an athlete who has done so much, even minus the medals, but Webb is clearly in the belly of a mighty struggle. In Osaka, Webb barely survived a dizzying semifinal in which he ran most of the race in last place and Wednesday night in the final was walked down by more than half the field after suicidally leading the race for the first 700 meters, surrendering for a lap to 18-year-old Kenyan Asbel Kiprop, and then stalling out on his kick to the finish.

Minutes after the race, Webb met U.S. journalists and laid open his soul in ways that athletes seldom do. It was painful to participate. "I just got beat," he began. "By everybody." It got from more impassioned from here. "I got myself in trouble last time by staying in the back. And so I didn't want to get in trouble again. So I'll be in the front. That didn't work, either, so I don't know what else to do.

"At one point, I thought I was doing a pretty good job," Webb continued. "I felt halfway decent. Somebody took over for me halfway though," -- that would be Kiprop -- "and I felt pretty good. When the real gametime came, I just didn't do it. I had nothing left."

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