The
US Relay quandary
Jim Dunaway for the IAAF
8 August 2001 - Yesterday noon, at a press conference
celebrating the 1-2-3 American finish in the men’s 100-metre dash, winner
Maurice Greene announced that he would not run on the U.S. 4x100 metre relay
team.
Then somebody asked Tim Montgomery and Bernard Williams who would be running on the American team. Both, with blank expressions, said, “I don’t know.”
They found out today. Joining Montgomery and Williams in the pool of sprinters for the U.S. team will be two sprinters with gold-medal experience: Jon Drummond, who not only led off the winning American 4x100 in Sydney last year, but also led off the U.S. team which won in Seville in 1999, and led off the World Championship team which ran 39.40 in Stuttgart to tie the then (and still current) world record. Denis Mitchell ran the third leg on the last three world record teams—the 39.50 in Tokyo in 1991, the 39.40 in Barcelona in 1992, and the 39.40 in Stuttgart.
So you’d figure Drummond to lead off, to Williams, to Mitchell, to Montgomery on the anchor. Although many coaches believe that the team’s fastest runner should run the second leg, many sprinters believe that the most important leg is the anchor, the one who crosses the finish line and whose picture ends up on the six o’clock news and the front page. And since Montgomery is the fastest man in the world capable of running 100 metres this week, he’ll probably run the anchor.
American sprinters tend to believe that almost any American team is going to win almost any 4x100 relay. And usually they’re right. But when they mess things up, they really do a job. In fact, it’s almost a tradition. The U.S. either wins gloriously, or goes down in smoke.
In 1912, the very first Olympic Games in which the 4x100 was held, the United States was disqualified for passing out of the zone. It happened again in 1960, and in 1988, when the American team didn’t even get out of the first round. And in the 1995 and 1997 World Championships, the U.S. again didn’t get out of the heats because of bungled baton exchanges.
Many of the foulups have occurred because the U.S. coaches have yielded to sentiment (or perhaps pressures from athletes’ agent) and have changed their lineups in the early rounds to allow one or more substitutes to run to give them a chance to win gold medals. This may make sense in the 4x400, where one weaker leg won’t substantially affect the U.S.’ chances of making the final. But it certainly can make a difference in the 4x1 -- as it has several times in the past.
Three other, lesser-known sprinters were also named to the pool today. They are J.J.Johnson, Jonathan Carter and Mickey Grimes. Johnson and Carter finished 7th and 8th in the U.S. Championships and Grimes was a semifinalist.
One or more of them may end up running in the heats of the 4x100 on Saturday, or the semifinals on Sunday, two hours before the final which is also the concluding event of these World Championships (the schedule was undoubtedly arranged in the hope that Bruny Surin and Donovan Bailey would give provide a concluding triumph to match Canada’s Olympic 4x100 victory in the Atlanta Olympics in 1996.
Orin Richburg, the U.S. men’s coach here, was a world-class sprinter in the 1960s and has coached plenty of good sprint relay teams at the University of Washington.
It will be interesting to see how he handles this situation.
