After the U.S. women’s 4×100-meter relay won gold on a rainy night at the Stade de France in Paris, hopes were high that the U.S. men could put the nightmares of the past behind them and win their first Olympic gold medal since 2000.
In the words of NBC Olympics presenter Mike Tirico, the result was “predictable”: a disaster from start to finish.
With 100-meter gold medalist and Olympic 200-meter bronze medalist Noah Lyles out of his usual anchor role after contracting COVID-19 earlier this week, the U.S. had to make more changes to its roster than would have been expected based on its performances in the preliminary rounds. 100-meter bronze medalist Fred Curley moved to the anchor position, and 200-meter silver medalist Kenny Bednarek took over Curley’s role for the second leg.
Former 100m world champion Christian Coleman started for the United States, but his baton pass to Bednarek was a complete flop. Bednarek started early and came to a near complete stop to receive the baton, nearly crashing into Coleman’s back. When Bednarek got the baton, he was well outside the exchange zone, which resulted in an automatic disqualification. The pass from Kylie King to Fred Curley was also awkward, but the damage was already done with the first exchange.
Meanwhile, in the lead pack, Canada took a surprise gold medal in lane 9, winning their first Olympic title in the event since Donovan Bailey anchored and beat the USA in Atlanta in 1996. South Africa took silver in a continental record time of 37.57, while Great Britain beat reigning Olympic champions Italy to take the bronze medal.
Here’s where it all went wrong for the US team.
Here’s when Bednarek starts to make his mark: Coleman is nowhere near the tape in their lane.
Coleman ran a nice leg in practice, but Bednarek broke away so early that they barely had a chance to complete the handoff cleanly. pic.twitter.com/WWGAMmIOEm
— Jonathan Gault (@jgault13) August 9, 2024
This is nothing new for American men.
Though the U.S. men have won world titles in 2019 and 2023, their track record over the past 30 years has been riddled with DNFs and DQs (pardon the pun), currently standing at nine, dating back to the 1995 world championships in Sweden.
1995 World Championships – DNF (Heat)
1997 World Championships – DNF (Heat)
2005 World Championships – DNF (Heat)
2008 Olympics – DNF (Heat)
2009 World Championships – DQ (Qualifying)
2011 World Championships – DNF (last)
2015 World Championships – DQ (Final)
2016 Olympics – DQ (Final)
2024 Olympics – DQ (Final)
That doesn’t include retroactive disqualifications from the 2001 World Championships and 2012 Olympics for steroid use failures — otherwise, the total would be in double digits — or the baton-changing bungles that likely cost him gold medals at the 2004 Olympics and 2022 World Championships, or the baton-changing bungles at the Tokyo Olympics, which didn’t result in a DQ or DNF. However, they were eliminated in the preliminaries..
Even without Lyles, this was a great chance for the U.S. to win the 4x100m relay at an Olympic Games for the first time since Barcelona 1992. The women did their job, spawning some great Sha’Carey Richardson memes. Unfortunately, the men fell flat again at the Olympics.
