American sprinter Tyson Gay reached back to grab the baton “and there was nothing.”
He’s not the only American track favorite who will leave Beijing empty-handed.
The U.S. men’s and women’s 400-meter relay teams each botched batton handoffs in their preliminaries on a rain-soaked Thursday morning, knocking both out of medal contention.
“I take full blame for it,” Gay said of his bad exchange with Darvis Patton. “I kind of feel I let them down.”
And it’s the biggest letdown for the Americans in the event in nearly a century. The men’s relay team failed to reach the Olympic final for the first time since 1912 and the women missed for the first time since 1948.
The U.S. was near the front of the pack in their prelim heading into the third exchange, but when Patton approached Gay for the exchange, Gay failed to snag the batton when he reached back. Patton lunged as the pair approached the end of the passing zone, but the batton never reached Gay’s hand as it fell to the ground.
“It’s kind of the way it’s been happening to me this Olympics,” Gay said.
Patton said he was every bit as much to blame.
“That’s Tyson Gay,” he said. “He’s a humble guy, but I know it’s my job to get the guy the baton and I didn’t do that.”
The women also were near the front of their heat heading into the final exchange, but Lauryn Williams didn’t receive the batton from Torii Edwards and it fell to the track. Williams grabbed the dropped batton and finished the race — more than more than 6 seconds after first-place Belgium finished in 42.92. But the U.S. was disqualified for passing outside of the 20-meter handoff zone.
“If people want to assess the blame to me, that’s OK,” Williams said. “I mean, I can take whatever it is that people are going to dish out.
We had good chemistry. The hand was back there. She was there. I don’t know what happened.”
The loss was especially heartbreaking for women’s relay member Mechelle Lewis. The 27-year-old native of Fort Washington in Prince George’s County, quit an account executive job in New York City to train for the Olympics and pursue her dream of excelling on the sport’s largest stage.
“We’re really disappointed, but we’ll have to move forward from here,” Lewis said. “I don’t really know what happened. Sometimes you just have bad passes. When you’re in a situation where it’s raining and the adrenaline is flowing, things can happen.”
Had they advanced in either race, the Americans may not have been favored anyway, considering the dominance of Jamaica. Now, budding stars of the Beijing Games have an even clearer path toward being called the dominant team of these Olympics. With three days left in the meet, Jamaica has five track and field gold medals, one more than the United States. Not a bad scoreboard for an island country of 2.8 million, which would be only the third-largest city in the U.S.
“The whole Games haven’t gone quite as planned for Team USA in track and field.” Williams said. “We have no excuses and we’re not going to make any excuses.”
— The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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