After the race crawled through the first 400 meters in 70.56 seconds, Marla Runyan of the United States took the lead.
But "Esplanade" is vintage, defining Mr. Taylor in all his musicality, unpredictability and humanity, as the dancers race, leap, crawl and pause to music by Bach.
Spectatorship is transformed into a guessing game as the dancers race around or crawl on the floor in a darkness that occasionally, magically, lightens just enough for their bodies to be glimpsed as if through a gauzy haze.
As soon as he sprinted to the front and avoided trouble, Lagat strategically slowed the race to a crawl, wanting to see if anyone else would shift into passing gear.
There is even a diaper derby, or crawling race.
Today's race unfolded at a crawl.
Bartz, 60, took Yahoo out of what will be a very expensive arms race for the Web crawling and query analysis that is 80% to 90% of the cost of search.
The 35-year-old novice from landlocked Niger was duly tailed off in his latest eliminator in the single sculls, doubtless feeling the effects of his first races as he crawled home in his slowest time yet, 9min 7.9minc.
The bikes will be flying perhaps 40 miles an hour at the end of the four-lap sprint, a tactical race that starts at a crawl, and the eight-lap keirin, in which a motorcycle sets the pace until the last two and a half laps.
This is the Chiditarod: a combination pub crawl, shopping cart race, costume contest and charity food drive.
