Sprint stars Allyson Felix and Sanya Richards divide and conquer

Ten Storylines To Watch With trips to Beijing at stake, a beleaguered sport comes home this week to Eugene , a.k.a. Track Town, U.S.A. , where adoring fans will be wrapped up in these and other events TANGLED WEBB: U.S. mile record holder Alan Webb is struggling. Can he find his stride in Eugene, where he famously broke Jim Ryun's high school mile mark in 2001 POLE VAULTERS: Brad Walker and Jen Stuczynski are soaring and within hailing distance of the world records held by Sergey Bubka and Yelena Isinbaeva. WOMEN'S 100: Olympic and World Championship silver medalist Lauryn Williams thrives at big meets, but nine U.S. women have run faster in '08. Who gets left home? QUARTER MASTER: Olympic 400 champ Jeremy Wariner has a new coach and a young pursuer, LaShawn Merritt, as he chases the world record held by Michael Johnson. SHOT SHOOTOUT: Showman and two-time Olympic silver medalist Adam Nelson, who made the shot put cool, will duel with Christian Cantwell and Reese Hoffa. MEN'S 200: World champ Tyson Gay has enough on his mind with Usain Bolt's emergence. But here he'll have to fend off Wallace Spearmon and a slew of others. WOMEN'S 10,000: Shalane Flanagan set the U.S. record in May in her 10K debut; Kara Goucher won bronze at the '07 worlds. The U.S. has never been this good. NEW FACES: Nebraska senior Dusty Jonas has high-jumped a world-leading 7'8 3/4". Women's 1,500 fave Shannon Rowbury has cut 11 seconds off her PR this year. A LOT OF LAGAT: Running for the U.S. for the first time, ex-Kenyan Bernard Lagat won the 1,500 and 5,000 at the '07 worlds. Now he wants a shot at the Olympic double.

ON THE toughest of training days, when repeat sprints painfully take their toll under the central Texas sun, Sanya Richards reaches for motivation and finds a name. Allyson Felix. "I think about her all the time when I'm working out, because she has such great talent," says Richards. "And such fast times." Richards drives her arms and pushes harder, chasing a distant ghost. Half a continent away, Felix works at UCLA on a weathered orange track framed by eucalyptus trees. She, too, knows where to find her best race. Sanya Richards .

"I love running against her," says Felix. She extends her long, liquid stride until her heels clip the back of her tights.

They are not good friends (nor enemies, either), yet each understands the other better than any outsider could, sharing outsized talents and rare ambition. They will compete against each other at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials, which open this Friday in Eugene , Ore., yet they will not run against each other. Both in Eugene and at the Beijing Games in August they will be fighting separately for the tiny and exclusive slice of fleeting fame awarded to the queen of Olympic track. They will be compared without facing off.

Each had hoped to run both the 200 and the 400 meters at the trials and the Games. Felix, 22, won a silver medal in the 200 at the 2004 Olympics when she was just 18. She has since twice won the world title at that distance and last summer at the worlds in Osaka, Japan, won three gold medals, taking the 200 and running on the 4x100 and 4x400 relays, flaming a split of 48 seconds flat on the latter, one of the fastest relay legs in history.

Richards, 23, set a U.S. record of 48.70 seconds for the open 400 in 2006 and in that same year was ranked second in the world in the 200. Last summer, despite a debilitating illness called Behcet's syndrome, she made the world championships in the 200, ran with Felix on the 4x400 relay and dominated the 400 on the late-summer leg of the international circuit, after splitting a pair of 400 races with Felix.

They would have been favored to win four medals between them in the two individual events. But the Beijing Olympic program overlaps the 200 and 400, making a double too risky. Early in 2007 Richards petitioned the International Association of Athletics Federations, track's governing body, for a change in the schedule that would enable the 200-400 double. Michael Johnson completed that double at the 1996 Olympics, as did Marie-José Pérec of France . After her performance in Osaka, Felix added a petition of her own.

Both were turned down. "Another example of track and field shooting itself in the foot," says Clyde Hart, who coaches Richards and coached Johnson in 1996. "There's absolutely no reason not to make that double possible unless you're trying to make it possible for more people to win medals."

However, Pauline Davis-Thompson, who ran on the Bahamas ' gold-medal-winning 4x100 relay and is now a member of the IAAF Council , says, "We would love to have made that change, but the petition was not made in a timely manner. The schedule was [already] set. I wish it could have been done. The sport is suffering now because of morally bankrupt individuals [a reference to steroid scandals], and these two young women can lift the sport."