With so much fo­cus on Us­ain Bolt's in­jured ham­string and the Russ­ian team's ban amid charges of sys­tem­at­ic dop­ing, it's easy to lose track of who could be mak­ing the head­lines at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

Al­ways among the mar­quee Olympic at­trac­tions, the track and field com­pe­ti­tion runs Au­gust 12-21. From the 100-me­tre sprints to the marathons, there are 47 gold medals up for grabs. Some ath­letes and events to watch:

BOLT, OR UN­BOLT­ED: Even if he was ful­ly fit, Bolt, the world record-hold­er and two-time de­fend­ing cham­pi­on in the 100- and 200-me­tre sprints, will have plen­ty of com­pe­ti­tion. World cham­pi­onship sil­ver medal­ist Justin Gatlin record­ed the two fastest times of the sea­son to Ju­ly 3 with a 9.80 and 9.83 at the US tri­als, hold­ing off Trayvon Bromell in 9.84.

Gatlin won the 100-200 dou­ble at the tri­als, a feat 2011 world cham­pi­on Yohan Blake was matched at the Ja­maican cham­pi­onships af­ter Bolt with­drew.

Af­ter edg­ing Nick­el Ash­meade to win the 100 in 9.95, Blake–the sil­ver medal­ist in the 100 and 200 in Lon­don–said he felt his con­fi­dence com­ing back.

WORLD'S FASTEST WOMEN: Dafne Schip­pers wants to break the Ja­maica-US dom­i­nance in the women's Olympic sprints by im­prov­ing one place on her per­for­mance at the world cham­pi­onships, where she won the 200 and took sil­ver in the 100.

Af­ter win­ning the Eu­ro­pean 100-me­ter ti­tle, the Dutch for­mer hep­tath­lete she said, "I'm shap­ing up well for Rio."

Her per­son­al best of 10.81 is well off the world-lead­ing 10.70 set by Elaine Thomp­son at the Ja­maican tri­als.

Thomp­son's time equaled the Ja­maican record Shelly-Ann Fras­er-Pryce set in 2012, and rel­e­gat­ed the de­fend­ing Olympic cham­pi­on to sec­ond place.

That's not a po­si­tion that sits well with Fras­er-Pryce, a cham­pi­onship spe­cial­ist who has won three world and two Olympic golds in the 100.

There's ex­tra in­cen­tive for the 29-year-old Fras­er-Pryce, too–the chance to be the first woman to win the same in­di­vid­ual event at three suc­ces­sive Olympics.

Eng­lish Gard­ner leads the US con­tin­gent af­ter a per­son­al best of 10.74 at the tri­als, where she edged Tian­na Bar­to­let­ta and world cham­pi­onship bronze medal­ist Tori Bowie, who both ran 10.78.

AL­MOST A PER­FECT 10: Ash­ton Eaton is a hot favourite to win an­oth­er prize for most ver­sa­tile ath­lete at the Olympics.Even with a ten­der right ham­string, Eaton won the US tri­als with 8,750 points in the de­cathlon, well be­low the world record 9,045 he set in win­ning the world cham­pi­onships last year but al­so well clear of all his peers.

Eaton warmed up for Lon­don in 2012 with a world record in the US tri­als (9,039) and won the Olympic gold with 8,869.His aim now is to sur­pass 9,000 points at every ma­jor event. Ro­man Se­br­le is the on­ly oth­er de­cath­lete to break the 9,000 bar­ri­er, with 9,026 back in 2001.

SE­MENYA READY: Cast­er Se­menya has been just about un­beat­able this sea­son over 800 me­tres and is the favourite for gold at Rio, en­ter­ing with a world-lead­ing time of 1:56.64 for the first half of the year.

Se­menya has had a tu­mul­tuous ca­reer since win­ning the world 800 ti­tle at age 18 in 2009. The is­sue of gen­der ver­i­fi­ca­tion and hy­per­an­dro­genism–the pres­ence of high lev­els of testos­terone in fe­male ath­letes–gained glob­al at­ten­tion af­ter that win and Se­menya was or­dered to un­der­go test­ing.

She even­tu­al­ly was cleared to com­pete and won sil­ver in the 800 at the 2012 Olympics to get her ca­reer on back on track. But she missed the 2013 world ti­tles be­cause of in­jury and didn't make the fi­nal at the 2015 worlds.

Af­ter set­ting Olympic qual­i­fy­ing times in the 400 and 800 with­in hours at the South African cham­pi­onships in April, Se­menya said she felt like she was start­ing to en­joy the sport again.

Sprint­er Du­tee Chand , who was sus­pend­ed by the IAAF and missed two big meets in 2014 be­cause of hy­per­an­dro­genism, took her case to the Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion for Sport and had the IAAF rules sus­pend­ed last year, clear­ing the way for her to com­pete for In­dia in Rio.

SU­PER SAT­UR­DAY: Rule Bri­tan­nia echoed around the Olympic sta­di­um in 2012 when Mo Farah won the 10,000, Jes­si­ca En­nis-Hill won the hep­tathlon and Greg Ruther­ford won the long jump to give Britain three gold medals on one Sat­ur­day night.

The way the sched­ule works out for Rio, they have the chance to do it again on Sat­ur­day, Au­gust 13.

All three won their events at the world cham­pi­onships last year– En­nis-Hill suc­cess­ful­ly re­turn­ing to com­pe­ti­tion af­ter hav­ing a ba­by, and Farah com­plet­ing the 5,000-10,000 dou­ble again.

SET­TING THE BAR HIGH: If Rus­sia's ban is up­held, the ab­sence of world record-hold­er and two-time Olympic cham­pi­on Ye­le­na Isin­baye­va will leave a hole in the women's pole vault com­pe­ti­tion–par­tic­u­lar­ly for Amer­i­can Jenn Suhr.

"I al­ways said I want­ed to com­pete against the best," said Suhr, who won Olympic gold in 2012 on a count­back from Yaris­ley Sil­va and took sil­ver be­hind Isin­baye­va in 2008 at Bei­jing.

"If every­thing is on the up and up–and the peo­ple who know more than I do say, 'Yeah, she's in,' she's in. Right now, I have no con­trol over it. I'm hap­py that I'm in."

Suhr missed a medal at last year's worlds but her best mark of 4.91 places her sec­ond on the all-time list be­hind Isin­baye­va.Fac­ing heavy ex­pec­ta­tions is Brazil's Fabi­ana Mur­er, who won the 2011 world ti­tle, the sil­ver in 2015 and set a South Amer­i­can record 4.87 to qual­i­fy for her home Olympics.

"There is a lot of pres­sure, be­fore a home Olympics," Mur­er said, "but I have the ex­pe­ri­ence to deal with it."

AP