Would anybody have believed it? And that photo finish. I thought US had it but the photo showed otherwise.
Just having plenty of speed is not enough in the relays. That baton always makes things interesting, esp. in the 100. If the race (100 m relay) had been a couple of strides longer, Greene would have been first.
The USA coming into the 2nd to 3rd sprinter transition was in the lead but fumbled it so badly that they lost the lead and was 3rd place coming out of the transition, in the final pass to maurice greene which was pretty good, they were third behind GB and Nigeria..I think...Maurice passed Nigeria, but ran out of room against GB to lose by .01 second I believe which on the camera reply looked like a nose of the GB racer just ahead of the top of Maurice's head...incredible race
Hahahahaha!!! Let's not forget its the team who gets the baton round the track fastest that wins, not the team who has the most individual sprinting medals!
There is no question, if the batton had been passed cleanly, they could have gone round another time before anyone else crossed the line
it looks like the US men mastered the difficult part, ie. running fast. but they screwed up on the easier part, ie. passing the baton.
Actually i choose my words wrong...it wasn't so much a fumble, but they didn't pass it well or took to long...and after the fact, they were talking about the sprinter couldn't hear the pass or something bizarre
The US women might have won a Gold if a baton pass hadn't been mishandled. The US picks their relay runners on the basis of speed. and they often make substitutions between prelims and finals. With enough failures, the coaches may someday use relay specialists—teams of four who only run relays and are not the fastest individuals, but who always stay together as a unit and emphasize efficient baton passing. The US has enough talented runners to do that, and it gives more runners a chance to compete, although it may mean sacrificing individual glory for some.
Passing the baton is not easy at all, I was in my high school team 4x100 relay team. It's very difficult to run at full speed and pass the baton to the next runner who is also running. Dropping the baton always happened, but of course HK high school teams are no where near the US team level.
Sure, but in this case, the GB runner has a longer neck and a bigger head to assist him pierce the tape faster!
If I am not mistaken, it is the chest which is used as the marker for crossing the line. Can somebody confirm or correct me on this? Why I find it so amazing is that the US team has only twice before not won the 100m relay in the Olympics in open competition.
Come to think of it, you may be right because of the common phrase "breasting the tape". But a confirmation is in order.
The U.S. team obviously didn't practise/train for the relay very much. Goes for both the men and women. At their caliber of competition, their relay passing should be absolutely flawless. It seems they figured it wasn't important to practise passing the baton as long as they had all the fastest runners. Such ignorance and arrogance was their downfall. The other countries had seamless passes while the U.S. really looked like they only had a few practice trials at it. When I ran track, we practised passing the baton over and over, until we were sick of it. At such short distances as 100m and less (on the curves), at Olympic caliber you can't expect to beat even a slower runner if he's already accelerated to near full speed when he has the baton while you're just "jogging" when you get your baton! The U.S. had the potential to blow everyone away but as some of you have pointed out, the relay is more than just running fast.
But don't overdo as the US women's 4x100m did when Jones was unable to catch up with the 'speedy' last runner and was only able to 'pass' the baton to her 'OUTSIDE' the box and therefore got DISQUALIFIED!
She took off too soon and thus the timing was late for her teammate to catch up to her. If they had practised it enough, they would know precisely when to start their lead-off run, and how fast to take off, etc. It was pretty bad all around for both teams. Even my wife, who has never run competitive track before, exclaimed, "Aren't they supposed to practise the whole baton passing thing?" because she thought they looked like they were doing it for the first time .
Yes it is the chest, in the mens race it clearly shows the line on the computer photo enhancement tool moving backwards and forwards so it is level with the both chests and the GB athlete does come first, if it were the first part of the body to cross the line it would have gone the way of the Americans because the americans foot crossed the line first ahead of the GB athlete.
I heard somewhere that all US sprinters, male or female, had to attend some sort of 'relay training camp' in order to be eligible for selection? Is this true? Their baton changes are usually slick, they were in the semi-finals anyway. Also it should be noted that changeover mistakes happen to many teams, the British men were almost disqualified in the semi for their bad passes.
Notice that whenever there's a close finish, the racers always attempt to lean their upper body as far forward as possible while extending the arms back. I'm sure they practice that quite a bit.
