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For U.S., Relay Chances Slip Away
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Said Patton: "Tyson is going to be humble and take the blame, but I am supposed to give him the baton. He didn't securely have it. I shouldn't have let it go."
In an almost eerie replay of the bobble minutes later, Lauryn Williams couldn't hold the handoff from Torri Edwards, who was so distraught she screamed, screamed again, and then covered her face with her hands. Williams, meantime, couldn't stand to walk off another track after a bungled handoff, as she participated in a previous one at the 2004 Olympics. So she seized the bouncing stick, grabbed it and charged to the finish, even though the United States had already been disqualified.
"I'm not exactly sure what happened," Williams said. "The stick had a mind of its own . . . The whole Games just hasn't gone well for Team USA in track and field, unfortunately."
Mechelle Lewis, a Fort Washington native and Oxon Hill High graduate, ran a clean second leg, getting the baton from Angela Williams.
"I don't know how the same pass, the same situation occurred" as in the men's relay, Lewis said. "It's a big, huge, unfortunate coincidence."
Before the relays took place, Felix choked up discussing her 200 race, describing herself as "pretty devastated." Felix, who had won the Olympic silver as an 18-year-old in Athens, added two gold medals at the world championships last summer and in 2005.
Perhaps the most painful part for American sprinters: watching the Jamaicans flaunt their dominance in the sprint events. Jamaican women swept the women's 100. Megastar Usain Bolt won the men's 100 and 200. Thursday, Campbell-Brown claimed the gold and Stewart the bronze. That makes seven medals for Jamaica, so far; the United States won four.
The Jamaicans say their hard training is finally paying off. Indeed, the Jamaicans have been in the mix in the sprint events for years, but these Olympics have changed the pecking order. In Summer Games from 1964 to 2004, Jamaicans won just four track and field gold medals.
Four-time Olympian Debbie Ferguson-McKenzie of the Bahamas, who finished seventh in the 200, speculated part of the explanation for Jamaica's rise was the downfall of many athletes -- mostly Americans -- caught up over the last five years in the ongoing crackdown by U.S. federal authorities on steroid use in sports.
"Obviously, everybody's surprised," Ferguson-McKenzie said. "They have totally dominated the sprints. . . . I think the playing field's been leveled a little bit. . . .[American] Marion Jones, she dominated the sport for so long. For so long, she stood in public and said she had never taken drugs and it came out that she did. . . . Now the field is fair. It wasn't just the U.S.A.; other countries were involved. But now the field is fair."
