“Well done, John!” Gina Grayson, 42, told Gilmour. She and her sister, Sue Malaxos, a marathoner at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, had been coached by Gilmour. Grayson brought her two children to watch him run and gave him a kiss on the cheek.

“Everyone was standing on their feet,” Grayson said. “Good on you.”

Brian Kennedy, 83, a longtime friend, touched Gilmour on the shoulder and joked: “The drug-testing people are out there. They want to see you.”

Youthful Indiscretion?

Two more races remained on Gilmour’s schedule, but there would be no meeting with Dharam Pal Singh in the 400. The Indian runner did not show up for the 100. He said by telephone that he had received travel money from supporters but had not received an official entry card for the meet. So he could not obtain a visa.

There were no official entry cards, officials said. Was this an excuse by Singh? A misunderstanding? The mystery deepened.

“I don’t have any regrets for myself,” Singh said. “But I regret that my going to Australia would have increased the pride of India.”

There was other bad news.

Arvind Kumar Singh, a subdivisional magistrate, or civil servant, in the district where Dharam Pal Singh lived, said that the authorities had received a complaint about him last year. It was related to an award he was to receive and whether he was eligible.

“We found his claim about his age as false,” Arvind Kumar Singh said.