Counting down the top ten track and field stories of 2009, here are numbers 1-5 on the women's side:

5. Who is Caster Semenya? The South African was almost unknown in international competition before 2009. Through 2008 her personal best in the 800 was 2:04.23. She qualified for the 2008 World Junior Championships but didn't reach the 800 final. Virtually overnight, Semenya was the 800-meter world champion, running a personal best 1:55.45 in Berlin. Due to her dramatic improvement, combined with her male-appearing physique, Semenya had begun gender testing prior to the World Championships. Partial results were eventually leaked, showing that Semenya had both male and female characteristics (possibly a result of chromosome abnormalities). The IAAF reached an agreement with Semenya that allows her to keep her World Championship gold medal, but the organization hasn't stated whether Semenya will be permitted to continue competing as a woman.

4. Richards and Isinbayeva hit the jackpot. Both Sanya Richards and Yelena Isinbayeva won all six of their Golden League events and shared the $1 million jackpot with Kenenisa Bekele. Richards ran a world-best 48.83 seconds to win the 400 in Brussels on Sept. 4 in the year's final Golden League race. Isinbayeva cleared 4.7 meters (15 feet, 5 inches) on her first attempt to win the Brussels pole vault competition and complete her six-meet sweep.

3. Valerie Vili dominates. The New Zealander was the shot put world champion and threw a personal best 21.07 meters (69 feet, 1 inch) - the third-best effort dating back to 2000 - to win the World Athletics Final. Vili was undefeated in 2009. She owned the year's top six throws and 10 of the top 12.

2. Sanya Richards takes the gold. Richards won her first individual world championship, taking the 400 in a then-world leading 49.0. Learning the lesson of her late fade in the 2008 Olympics, Richards remained strong down the stretch in Berlin. She added a second gold medal as a part of the American 4 x 400 relay squad.

1. Yelena Isinbayeva breaks another record. Breaking records is nothing new for Isinbayeva, but her latest effort shouldn't be taken for granted, particularly as it occurred in the same month that she no-heighted at the World Championships. On Aug. 28 in Zurich - in the season's fifth Golden League meet - the Russian entered the competition at 4.71/15-5½, then cleared 4.81/15-9¼. Pushing the bar one centimeter beyond her world mark, Isinbayeva cleared 5.06/16-7¼ on her first attempt to set a new outdoor record.

Photo: Sanya Richards on her way to victory at the 2009 World Championships. Stu Forster/Getty Images

Counting down the top ten track and field stories of 2009, here's numbers 1-5 on the men's side:

5. Dwight Phillips rebounds. The 2004 Olympic long jump gold medalist regained his health and returned to form in 2009. Phillips, 32, posted a world-leading, personal best jump of 8.74 meters (28 feet, 8 inches, going into a 1.2 meters-per-second wind), and won the World Championship with a leap measuring 8.54/28-¼.

4. Kenenisa Bekele doubles. The Ethiopian distance master won the 10,000 meters at the World Championships (26:46.31), then out-kicked Bernard Lagat to win the 5,000 six days later. Lagat led Bekele down the final straight before Bekele (13:17.09) edged past Lagat (13:17.33) just before reaching the finish line.

3. Steven Hooker overcomes injury. Hooker entered the World Championship pole vault competition with a badly pulled leg muscle. The Australian took just one jump in the qualification round, clearing 5.65/18-6½, then had to be helped out of the landing pit. The following day he managed just two vaults, missing at 5.85/19-2¼ before clearing 5.90/19-4¼ to win the gold.

2. Usain Bolt beats himself in the 200. With Tyson Gay sidelined by injury, the main question in the World Championship 200-meter final was whether or not Bolt would break his own world record. The answer was "Yes." Running into a 0.3 meters-per-second wind, Bolt finished in 19.19 seconds, bettering the 19.30 standard he set at the 2008 Olympics.

1. Usain Bolt beats Tyson Gay. The year's only Bolt vs. Gay showdown didn't disappoint. Bolt won the World Championship 100-meter final in 9.58 seconds, breaking the world record for the third time. Gay finished second in a personal best 9.71, setting a short-lived U.S. record that he broke the following month when he ran 9.69 in Shanghai.

Photo: Kenenisa Bekele celebrates his second World Championship victory of 2009 after edging Bernard Lagat in the 5,000 meters. Mark Dadswell/Getty Images

Counting down the top ten track and field stories of 2009, here's numbers 6-10 on the women's side:

6. Anita Wlodarczyk sets hammer record. On her 24^th birthday, Poland's Wlodarczyk unleashed what was then the sixth-best women's hammer throw ever, a toss measuring 77.20 meters (253 feet, 3 inches). Two weeks later, at the World Championships in Berlin, Wlodarczyk topped Tatyana Lysenko's three-year-old world record and earned a gold medal by throwing 77.96/255-9 in the second round.

7. Yelena Isinbayeva breaks indoor pole vault mark. For the sixth straight year, Russia's Isinbayeva broke her own indoor pole vault world record at the Pole Vault Stars Meet in Donetsk, Ukraine in February. To break the monotony, however, in 2009 she broke the mark twice. She needed three vaults to clear 4.86/15-11¾, then, with the bar at 4.96/16-3¼, she missed her first two attempts to break the record. She then nudged the bar up to 4.97/16-3½ and cleared. On her ninth jump of the day she cleared 5.00/16-4¾, breaking a world pole vault record for the 26^th time in her career.

8. Brittney Reese jumps for gold. Reese, who wasn't quite 23 when she competed at this year's World Championships, had shown great promise in recent years, but 2009 was her breakout season. She topped the world long jump list for most of the year and saved her best for Berlin, where her third-round leap of 7.10/23-3½ gained her the championship and was the world-leading jump of 2009.

9. Carmelita Jeter sizzles in the 100. Jeter was at or near the top of the women's 100-meter list all year, but had to settle for a bronze medal in Berlin. She then put it all together in September, winning the World Athletic Final in 10.67 seconds - defeating World Champion Shelly-Ann Fraser in the process - then running the fourth-fastest women's 100 in history, 10.64, at the Shanghai Golden Grand Prix one week later.

10. Isinbayeva no-heights in Berlin. The Russian vaulter is a frequent contributor to this list, but this is one mention she would rather have avoided. Isinbayeva was inconsistent for much of the outdoor season and hit bottom at the World Championships, where she missed her opening height of 4.75/15-7, then missed twice at 4.8/15-9 and left the meet empty-handed. Poland's Anna Rogowska took advantage and won the pole vault gold after clearing 4.75.

Photo: Anita Wlodarczyk celebrates her World Championship victory. Andy Lyons/Getty Images

Counting down the top ten track and field stories of 2009, here's numbers 6-10 on the men's side:

6. Kenenisa Bekele shares the Golden League jackpot. Ethiopian distance great Bekele won all six Golden League races in 2009 (five at 5,000 meters and one at 3,000 meters) to share the $1 million jackpot with Yelena Isinbayeva and Sanya Richards. Bekele opened with his closest race of the series, in Berlin on June 14, running the 5,000 in 13:00.76 and edging Kenya's Abraham Chebii by .32 second. Bekele's biggest margin of victory came in the shortest race, the 3,000 in Paris on July 17. Bekele's winning time of 7:28.64 was 4.51 seconds better than American Bernard Lagat, and was the world's second-fastest 3,000 time of the year. Bekele posted the world's top 5,000 time in the fifth Golden League race, winning the Zurich event on Aug. 28 in 12:52.32.

7. LaShawn Merritt beats Jeremy Wariner in Berlin. Merritt and Wariner were regular competitors in 2008, the year in which Merritt topped Wariner for the Olympic 400-meter gold medal. They didn't face off in 2009 until the World Championship final, where Wariner's best time of the year (44.60 seconds) couldn't top Merritt (a world-leading 44.06), giving Merritt his first individual World Championship victory.

8. Tyson Gay sets a U.S. record. Gay won the 100 in Shanghai on Sept. 20 in 9.69 seconds, breaking the U.S. mark he'd set a month earlier while finishing second to Usain Bolt at the World Championship. Gay matched Bolt's Olympic-winning time from 2008 as the second-fastest legal 100 meters ever run. And Gay achieved this feat with a tender groin muscle that was scheduled to be surgically repaired after the season.

9. Yusuf Saad Kamel rallies in the 1500. In the World Championship 1500-meter final, Bahrain's Kamel passed almost half the field in the final half lap to win the gold in 3:35.93, edging Ethiopian Deresse Mekonnen (3:36.01). Both Kamel and defending champion Bernard Lagat were caught in a pack early in the final lap. Lagat couldn't escape as quickly as Kamel, so the American's finishing kick only brought him into third place.

10. Christian Cantwell wins outdoors. Cantwell owned two World Indoor titles but hadn't won an outdoor world championship before 2009. The American took second in the 2008 Olympics and appeared headed for a silver in the Berlin World Championships when his fifth-round throw of 22.03 meters (72 feet, 3 inches) put him in first place to stay. Cantwell's victory was no fluke - he posted the world's top three throws in 2009.

Photo: Christian Cantwell celebrates his World Championship victory. Mark Dadswell/Getty Images