Canada won the men’s Olympic 4×100-meter relay on Friday after hot favorite the United States messed up a changeover yet again and was disqualified.
Andre De Grasse ran a superb last leg to bring the Tokyo silver medalists home in 37.50 seconds for their second gold in the event following their 1996 win.
Akani Simbine, who finished fourth in the individual 100 meters, ran a terrific last leg to get South Africa silver in an African-record 37.57, as did Zharnel Hughes to earn Britain bronze in 37.61.
Hughes was in the team that finished second in Tokyo but was later stripped of the medal because of a doping offence by teammate CJ Ujah.
The U.S. failure was the latest in a long series as it has not won the event it used to dominate since 2000.
Christian Coleman gave the Americans a great start but ended up virtually colliding with Kenny Bednarek at the first handover. They recovered to finish well down the field but were disqualified as the exchange was illegal.
“It just didn’t happen,” Coleman said. “Maybe we could have put in some more work. I just think in the moment it didn’t happen.”
Since 1995, in the Olympics and World Championships, the U.S. has now had 11 dropped batons, disqualifications or bans.
“At the end of the day, we knew what we could do,” said Kyree King, who ran the third leg. “We came out here and we had the mindset of no risk, no reward, so we went out there and went big. It didn’t happen.”
Retired American sprinter Carl Lewis, who has twice won Olympic gold in the 4×100 relay, blasted U.S. team officials for Friday’s performance.
It is time to blow up the system. This continues to be completely unacceptable. It is clear that EVERYONE at @usatf is more concerned with relationships than winning. No athlete should step on the track and run another relay until this program is changed from top to bottom. https://t.co/Re6THj8QTm
— Carl Lewis (@Carl_Lewis) August 9, 2024
The United States was without Noah Lyles, who won gold in the 100-meter dash but called it an Olympics after winning the bronze medal in the 200 while fighting COVID.
Not all was lost for the U.S. men on the track Friday. In the evening’s final race, American Rai Benjamin finally pulled out of the shadow of world-record holder Karsten Warholm, getting his first individual major title by blowing past the defending champion to win the 400-meter hurdles in 46.46 seconds.
Alison dos Santos of Brazil finished third for the second straight Olympics, giving these Games the same three men on the podium as Tokyo.
“I got it done,” the 27-year-old Benjamin said. “It has eluded me so long. … I don’t think I ever doubted it. It was more just staying patient and keep showing up every day and something has to shake. I told myself, ‘This has got to go my way at some point.’ And it went my way today.”
Information from Reuters and The Associated Press was used in this report.
