By the time the sprinters had made the exchange, the Americans were well on their way to a sixth-place finish in the heat and one of their most embarrassing days in an Olympic event filled with them. It marks the first time since 2008 the U.S. men’s 4x100 meter relay team will not run in the finals at an Olympics.
This rendition was a gold medal favorite, stocked with some of the fastest men on the planet, all of whom were keen on returning the U.S. to its past dominance in the event. Instead, they continued the team’s lingering tradition of botched handoffs, and in the process, extended the gold medal drought for male American sprinters in Tokyo.
“It’s a lot on our shoulders when we go out there and wear this uniform, because you’re expected to meet the expectation; you’re expected to get gold,” said Cravon Gillespie, who ran the anchor leg. “When you go out there and don’t even make the final, it’s crazy, man. It’s just crazy.”
Since 1988, the 4x100 team has won 12 medals — but it has been disqualified 11 times, nine of those because of errant handoffs. In 40 appearances in the world championships or Olympics over the past 109 years, the U.S. had never not won a medal or been disqualified in a race — until Thursday, when it clocked a 38.10 and was forced to listen to the announcer at the stadium list off all of the countries that had finished ahead: China, Canada, Italy, Germany and Ghana. The Americans’ frustration boiled over as they splintered from one another after the race.
Gillespie looked stunned as he stared at the video board after the race. He was the last to leave the track. Kerley and Baker stopped to talk with the media. Trayvon Bromell did not. He stormed away from reporters and waved off a USA Track and Field public relations official who was trying to chase him down in the tunnel of the stadium.
The U.S. relay coach, Orin Richburg, will not be available to reporters until after the United States is finished with all of its relay races in the Olympics, according to a USA Track and Field spokesman. Criticism poured in from online, including from Carl Lewis, the most decorated athlete in U.S. track and field history, who questioned the team’s leadership in a tweet after the race.
“The USA team did everything wrong in the men’s relay,” Lewis wrote. “The passing system is wrong, athletes running the wrong legs, and it was clear that there was no leadership. It was a total embarrassment, and completely unacceptable for a USA team to look worse than the AAU kids I saw.”
He later pinned the tweet to the top of his profile.
There were questions beyond the messy handoff between Kerley and Baker. Bromell didn’t appear to get off to the cleanest start, and Gillespie, a somewhat controversial pick to run the anchor leg, couldn’t bring it home. The team also didn’t appear to have developed much chemistry.
When asked how much practice time they had gotten before the heat, Kerley said tersely: “Don’t know.”
Baker chimed in: “Not much.”
Gillespie paused when he was probed about it later, and said the team had practiced “a few days, I’ll give you that. A few days.”
When a reporter asked him if that was enough, he replied: “Not enough.”
It was also a reflection of the struggles that U.S. sprinters are having in winning — or in some cases, even positioning themselves to win — gold medals. The U.S. has hauled in the most medals of any track and field team: 19 total, 12 more than second-place Jamaica, with four gold medals. None of those has been won by a male sprinter. Two belong to athletes in field events: discus thrower Valarie Allman and shot putter Ryan Crouser.
The other two belong to Athing Mu, who took gold in the women’s 800-meter final, and Sydney McLaughlin, who set a world record in the 400-meter hurdles. Jamaica has won three gold medals in track, including Hansle Parchment, who upset heavily favored Grant Holloway to win the 110-meter hurdles Thursday. Afterward, Parchment was asked: Would he rather Jamaica have more gold medals, or more medals overall than any other country?
“Less is better — more golds,” Parchment said. “You see the bronze and silver we put down, it might not be a lot compared to the others. But golds, I’ll choose that over the others.”
In many cases, the Americans are competing more against their own expectations than they are other countries. Bromell again symbolized that struggle Thursday to cap a difficult Olympics. After being anointed a medal favorite in the 100 meters, the 26-year-old clocked a time barely good enough to make the event semifinal, then missed qualifying for the final. There was a chance he could salvage these Olympics by helping the United States advance to the final and win a gold medal.
He started the race Thursday, and Gillespie finished it. Everything “felt okay” on his exchange from Baker, Gillespie said, but he couldn’t see what had happened a few seconds before on the ill-fated exchange between Kerley and Baker.
“I wouldn’t say I was in the best position … at the end of the day, I have to perform better, and I have to run those guys down and get us into the final,” Gillespie said. “It just wasn’t clicking today, for some reason.”
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