How the Women’s Team USA Sprint Relay Won Gold While the Guys Got DQ’d—Again

Gabby Thomas motored around the wet curve at the Stade de France track on Saturday night, during the women’s Olympic 4 x 100m relay final. It was the same curve she blitzed on Tuesday night while winning the individual 200-m gold, but this time, rather than go full-stop to the finish, her task was to pass the baton to Sha’Carri Richardson, the other superstar women’s sprinter for Team USA. 

The handoff could have been smoother. Thomas and Richardson didn’t connect on the first try, but neither runner lost their nerve. “We're professionals,” Thomas said after the race. “It was raining really hard when we were doing that. We're just moving really fast. I'm trying to get a stick around. We have trust and we've done this before. So you don't panic when it's your job.”

Richardson looked back to make sure the baton transferred into her hand. Then she took off, storming from fourth place to first, running the final leg in 10.09 seconds, the fastest in the anchor field. 

Once Thomas saw the baton in Richardson’s hand, she knew the race was theirs. “There was no doubt in my mind that we had it.” 

Before Richardson crossed the finish, she glanced to her right, at Daryll Neita of Great Britain. Richardson knew she would win, and sent her opponent a not-so-subtle message. 

For an instant, the Stade de France big-screen listed Great Britain as having finished first. Richardson snarled in disbelief. But order was quickly restored: United States relay team with the win, having run the 400 m in 41.78 seconds; Great Britain won silver in 41.85 seconds while Germany finished third, earning the bronze after crossing the finish line in 41.97 seconds. 

“Realizing that when we won as USA ladies, it was a phenomenal feeling for all of us,” said Richardson after the race. 

“Passing the baton to Sha’carri is very special and unique,” said Thomas. “I just felt very proud and I was grateful. I was grateful to have competed with these ladies, especially Sha’Carri, and we got the gold.”

The American women have now won the Olympic 4 x 100m relay 12 times, more than the rest of the world combined. Team USA has won the race in three of the last four Olympics Games. Melissa Jefferson kicked off the U.S. effort at the start, before handing the baton off to Twanisha Terry, who ran an outstanding 9.98-second split, tops in her cohort. 

“Nobody can run second-leg like me,” said Terry “That's just something that I wholeheartedly believe. I love second leg”

It showed. Terry, Jefferson, and Richardson are all training partners in Florida: Terry wore a shirt to her post-race press conference hailing “The Trio.” The three women all qualified for the 100 m in Paris. They’ve weaved in Thomas, who’s based in Austin. “Third leg is a crucial leg,” said Terry.  “So just being able to have someone to plug into the equation, for us to have a complete equation, she definitely fits the piece for that.” 

Seventeen minutes after the inspiring victory for the U.S. women, the gun went off for the guys.

And sadly for U.S. fans, the same old tale unfolded. 

The U.S. regularly features the planet’s deepest collection of speedsters. On paper, America has the fastest team, for both men and women. While the women won the Olympic 4 x 100 with regularity, the U.S. men entered Saturday night’s race not having won gold in the event since 2000, at the Sydney Games. Team USA men had last won a 4 x 100 medal two decades ago, a silver in Athens.

Nothing changed in France. Starter Christian Coleman and second-leg Kenny Bednarek, who won 200-m silver last night, failed to execute a clean handoff. Bednarek appeared to leave too early, initiating the mishap. Coleman stumbled into another lane; after the race, in which the Americans finished in the seventh position, Team USA was disqualified.

American men have botched handoffs repeatedly over the years. The 2024 team wasn’t in a mood to explain themselves afterward. “If y'all say something stupid, we ain't talking,” Fred Kerley, the 100-m bronze medalist in Paris who ran an anchor leg that wound up meaning nothing, said before reporters could make an inquiry. “I’ll let y'all know that now.”

Kerley then called two questions that were objectively reasonable stupid. Former U.S. sprinter Wallace Spearmon, an athlete handler at the USA Track & Field, shot Kerley a look; that didn’t stop Kerley from snipping again.

“Y'all say the same shit over and over,” said Kerley. 

Coleman, who stepped up as team spokesperson, denied that the absence of Noah Lyles, who ran the 200 m last night with COVID-19 and finished third but did not run the relay, contributed to the poor performance. 

“We’re going to bounce back from it, and we're gonna be good,” said Coleman. All of us are world class. I expect all of us to be back on the team in LA and I think on home soil, we will be able to have a little bit more confidence and bring it on. home.” 

Track legend Carl Lewis, a two-time 4 x 100m gold medalist, blasted U.S. track. 

“It is time to blow up the system,” he wrote on X. “This continues to be completely unacceptable. It is clear that EVERYONE at [U.S. Track & Field] 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.”

Not long after Lewis tweeted and Kerley insulted the media, the Americans women’s team stood on top of the podium. Richardson, who won her first Olympic gold medal after falling short in the 100 m last Saturday—and after missing out on her opportunity to run in Tokyo due to a controversial marijana suspension—shed a tear under her left eye as the national anthem played. Thomas already has two golds at these Paris Games. She could win another tomorrow night, in the 4 x 400 women’s relay. 

Thomas and Richardson embraced. No panic. A smooth connection.