By one objective standard, the medal count at this Olympics has been a success for the U.S. track and field team. With one event left, the men’s marathon Sunday, it has won more medals, 24, than any U.S. team since 1992.
That the medal count is four better than that of the 2000 Sydney Games was surprising, given the mess the BALCO doping scandal has created for the sport in the United States.
The numbers show track and field in the U.S. is resilient.
A new group of talented athletes filled in for some of the world and Olympic medalists who did not make the 2004 team after being charged with doping offenses. Twelve of the 20 individual event medalists are ages 18 to 26.
“The exciting thing was to see a group of young athletes cohesive enough as a team to deal with the ups and downs of the meet,” USA Track and Field Chief Executive Officer Craig Masback said.
“Allen Johnson goes down in the hurdles, and Terrence Trammell steps up [and wins silver]. Gail Devers goes down in the hurdles, and Joanna Hayes steps up [and wins gold]. Tom Pappas gets hurt in the decathlon, and Bryan Clay steps up [and wins silver].”
Yet the gold-medal total of eight is the second lowest by a U.S. team in Olympic history, better only than the six won in 1972 and 1976. Eight medals came from only three events–the men’s sprints.
The U.S. team ended the meet on a downer that began Friday, when the heavily favored women’s 400-meter relay did not finish after botching a baton pass.
The U.S. men’s sprint relay did finish Saturday, but a bad exchange kept it from winning. The loss to Britain was the first time a favored U.S. relay team ever had failed in the Olympics.
Men’s coach George Williams decided Friday not to use John Capel in the relay semifinal after receiving news Capel had tested positive for marijuana at a meet Aug. 9 in Munich. The track and field penalty for marijuana use affects only the meet at which it occurs. But Williams did not want to risk having Capel test positive again, as he had done at the NFL combine before his brief stay at the Bears’ training camp in 2001.
Another U.S. Olympian, 200-meter silver medalist Bernard Williams, also tested positive for marijuana this summer (this sentence as published has been corrected in this text).
None of that should have prevented the U.S. men from winning. After all, the team included three of the top four finishers in last Sunday’s 100: Justin Gatlin (gold), Maurice Greene (bronze) and Shawn Crawford (fourth, then 200 champion).
“We always know when it comes to flat speed, they are amazing,” said Darren Campbell, who ran the second leg for Britain. “The only way we can take them out is baton skills.”
Those skills were sorely lacking in the exchange between Gatlin, 22, on the second leg, and Coby Miller, who had to slow to a near stop to avoid running out of the 20-meter passing zone before he received the baton.
That left Greene behind Britain and Nigeria when he started the anchor leg, and he made up all but 1/100th of a second. Nigeria wound up third.
The winning time, 38.07 seconds, was second slowest since 1980. Only in 1988, when the U.S. team passed the baton out of the zone in the first round, has the Olympic champion run slower than 37.83.
“If something goes wrong with one person, it goes wrong with all four,” Greene said. “I was just happy we were able to finish the race.”
It gave Gatlin a complete set of medals: gold in the 100, silver in the relay, bronze in the 200.
Both U.S. teams won the 1,600-meter relays, where there is no need for fast exchanges.
The men’s victory was a foregone conclusion after their medal sweep in the open 400. Their time, 2:55.91, was fourth fastest in history and nearly five seconds faster than runner-up Australia.
This was the sixth straight U.S. win in the event. It made Jeremy Wariner, 20, who ran the third leg, the only U.S. athlete to win two track and field golds in Athens.
“We knew we had a good chance to win a gold medal, but all we focused on was getting the stick out,” Wariner said. “We didn’t care what time we ran. Sooner or later we are going to have a chance to run a world record.”
The women had a tougher race, beating Russia by a second with a time of 3:19.01.
The rest wasn’t pretty.
Breaux Greer, a medal hopeful in the javelin, would not comment after finishing last in the final, where his knee protected by a heavy brace obviously was a factor.
Amy Acuff made an odd comment after finishing fourth in the high jump, where she passed at a height that could have given her the bronze medal. Russia’s Yelena Slesarenko, 22, cleared an Olympic record 6 feet 9 inches to upset favored South African Hestre Cloete for the gold.
“I had nothing to gain,” Acuff said of skipping 6-7 1/2.
Had she cleared it on the first attempt, she would have finished third. Instead, she moved up to 6-8 1/4 and missed badly on all three attempts, no surprise, given her personal best is 6-7.
Acuff’s math was a little like the U.S. track and field medal count. It didn’t always add up.
