Women send powerful message in Olympic track and field

Tokyo: They set records everyone saw coming and others that surprised the experts.

They suffered, and battled, and spoke their truth in ways that hadn't been heard before.

Over nine days at the near-empty Olympic Stadium, the women of track and field delivered a memorable show, both inside the lines and out.

These are some of the athletes who defined the meet in Tokyo: Allyson Felix, Sydney McLaughlin, Sifan Hassan, Raven Saunders, Elaine Thompson-Herah.

Theirs was a sport in need of a good boost, not only because of the year-long delay sparked by the virus, but because no matter when they returned, Usain Bolt would no longer draw eyes to the track simply by showing up.

The women delivered not so much with the feel-good, dance-a-minute vibe that Bolt brought, but with a series of inspiring performances and messages that showed the heart of their sport was still beating strong.

Some highlights included:

Hassan and her unrelenting journey toward three medals two gold and one bronze in three of the longest races held on the track.

She started with gold in the 5,000 meters, then came back with bronze in the 1,500. She closed the show Saturday with a gold-medal run in the 10,000 one in which her vision was so clouded by exhaustion that she admitted she could not see the finish line.

I'm so happy, she said after the odyssey six races over eight nights covering 65 laps and 24 kilometers was finally complete I'm relieved. I'm finished. I can sleep.

McLaughlin, whose back-and-forth duals in the 400-meter hurdles with U.S. teammate Dalilah Muhammad reached a crescendo at the Olympics.

It was a race that had been much-anticipated and all but preordained to again reset the world record that one or the other had broken in three previous showdowns.

And they lived up to the hype. McLaughlin lowered her own mark to 51.46 seconds. Just as impressively, Muhammad's silver-medal time of 51.58 would have been a world record, too.

I think it's two athletes wanting to be their best, McLaughlin said, and knowing there's another great girl who's going to help you get there.

The sprinters were fast through the leadup to the Olympics, so it wasn't all that surprising to see that pace keep going in Tokyo.

But while most of the pre-Games buzz went to Jamaica's Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce (100) and American Gabby Thomas (200), each of whom briefly staked their claim as the second-fastest women in history at their respective distances, it was Thompson-Herah who wound up there in

the end.