Dominant USA wins, a botched baton handoff, drama in the shot put and other takeaways from track and field at the Olympics
By Kyle Feldscher, CNN
Saint-Denis (CNN) — The night began with a team of American women charging down the stretch for a thrilling comeback win and it ended with an American man asserting himself as the new top racer in his race.
It was another night of Team USA dominance on the track, save for one disappointing relay that will be surrounded by unanswerable questions when people look back on these Paris Olympics.
Here are seven takeaways from a drama-filled night at the Stade de France.
Sha’Carri Richardson is just too fast
American Sha’Carri Richardson may have been beaten for the gold medal in the individual 100-meter race earlier this week, but she wasn’t letting that happen again in the women’s 4x100m relay.
Even after a difficult handoff into the final leg of the race from 200-meter gold medalist Gabby Thomas, Richardson just would not be denied. She raced down the straightaway, first tracking down Germany’s Rebekka Haase and then Great Britain’s Daryll Neita, blowing by them in a way that made world-class sprinters look like they were standing still.
Despite starting from behind, Richardson was able to pull away so much in the final stages of the race that she was able to take a moment to cast a look at her soon-to-be-vanquished rivals and give them a little bit of side-eye as she crossed the finish line.
It was truly stunning to witness and the only person who seemed to not be surprised at all by what had just happened was Richardson, who nodded to the crowd with a look that appeared to say, “Yeah, I did that.”
“I just remember trusting my third leg, trusting Gabby and knowing that she’s going to put this thing in my hand no matter what, and to leave my best on the track. I was very comfortable with these ladies,” Richardson said after.
The moment clearly meant a lot to Richardson after a surprising silver in the 100 meters earlier this week and missing the Tokyo Games after being suspended for testing positive for THC, a chemical found in marijuana. Tears were running down her cheeks during the playing of the “Star-Spangled Banner” when she received her gold medal Friday night.
US men disappoint in 4x100m relay, Canada capitalizes
Meanwhile, the men’s version of the race will not be remembered nearly as fondly by Team USA’s fans.
It was a night to forget for the American team as a shoddy baton handoff caused the US team to be disqualified from the race. The transfer between Christian Coleman and Kenny Bednarek was the latest in a long line of baton problems that the USA has had in these high-profile relays and led to a bitterly disappointing DQ.
The team of Canadians took advantage of the botch and took gold by seven-hundredths of a second over South Africa. Great Britain would take the gold.
“It just didn’t happen,” Coleman said after the race. “We could’ve put in more work, it just didn’t happen. We practiced a lot. Me and Kenny have been on the team a few times, and we felt really confident going out there. It just didn’t happen this time. It’s part of the sport.”
He added, “We’ll bounce back from it and all of us are world-class. I expect all of us to be back on the team in LA. We’ll have more confidence to bring it all home.”
There will be one unanswerable question that hangs over this race for Team USA: what would have happened if Noah Lyles was healthy?
Lyles tested positive for Covid-19 this week after winning the men’s 100-meter sprint gold medal. He competed on Thursday in the 200-meter sprint, but finished in a disappointing third place – a position that seemed less disappointing after he revealed he had been struggling with Covid symptoms over the previous days.
Lyles was set to be a part of the relay team but announced very early Friday morning Paris time that his Olympic Games were over. He still attended the medal ceremony for the 200-meter race on Friday night in a mask, but his time on the track in Paris was over.
Marileidy Paulino runs away from the field in the 400m for Olympic record
For a moment in the women’s 400-meter race, it seemed like Salwa Eid Naser of Bahrain might be headed for an unbelievable upset.
And then that moment passed as Marileidy Paulino decided it was winning time.
The reigning world champion in this race and the silver medalist in Tokyo, Paulino simply had another level to go to that Naser or the other competitors in the race didn’t have. As she came into the final stretch, Paulino was able to put on the jets and leave the pack behind for an easy victory.
She ended up setting an Olympic record, finishing in 48.17 seconds.
“I’m very happy, I still cannot believe that just happened. It was either going for the world record or the Olympic record, and thank God, I achieved the Olympic record,” she said after.
Yemisi Ogunleye takes gold in the shot put with incredibly clutch throw
Germany’s Yemisi Ogunleye was looking like a lock for the silver medal after being unable to match New Zealand’s Maddison-Lee Wesche for much of the night.
Wesche set the bar in the shot put with a first throw of 19.58 meters. She’d eventually go even further to 19.86 meters on her fifth throw, still just ahead of Ogunleye’s 19.73 meters.
Ogunleye had one last opportunity to take home the gold with her sixth and final throw of the night. And, to her shock, she did it.
With a massive 20-meter toss, Ogunleye stunned the Stade de France crowd and herself with the game-changing throw. She covered her mouth in disbelief and suddenly all the pressure was on Wesche. She wouldn’t be able to beat the mark, having to settle for a shocking silver.
“In that moment, I was just saying a prayer. It was the moment when I knew that, if I have the faith, I am capable to do more than I can think or ask for. In that moment, I just took all the energy that had left and just put it out there,” she said. “When I entered the ring, I just said, ‘God, now it is the time. Let’s just go.’ I know that with my faith, I could do my job and so it happened today.”
She added, “My goal coming into these championships was 20 meters. That was the distance that I threw just once in Glasgow. I knew I was capable of throwing such distances. In the Olympic competitions, it is necessary to bring all the best you have because you only have this chance once.”
Wesche took the sudden turnaround in fortune in stride.
“I had a little bit of butterflies. I knew I was capable of producing a 20-meter throw, but it just didn’t happen on the day,” she said. “Yemi came out on top, and I’m just so excited to be a part of shot put, with it being so competitive at the moment.”
Beatrice Chebet does the distance double with 10k gold
It’s the longest track race in the Olympics and Beatrice Chebet used every second of it to take home the gold.
Chebet was attempting to accomplish the extremely rare distance double at the Olympics, having won the 5,000 meters earlier in the week. She bided her time for much of the 10,000 meters, staying in the middle of the main pack for almost all of it.
But in the final two laps, the world record holder in this event made her move. Over the final 800 meters of the race, the Kenyan shot forward and appeared to be in the clear on her way to another easy victory.
But Italy’s Nadia Battocletti decided in the final 200 meters of the race that she wasn’t going to let Chebet go that easily. The Italian’s kick at one point brought her even with the Kenyan, maybe even a little in front. But she just didn’t have enough to sustain that effort and faded in the final meters, allowing Chebet to take the gold by .10 seconds.
“I’m so happy. To do the 5000m and 10,000m is not something easy,” Chebet said afterwards. “But just focus and know that you can achieve. Just believe in yourself. I believed that I can do it.
“I just wanted to win the 10,000m for my country. My country has never won a gold medal (in the women’s 10,000m), so I said I wanted to be the first woman to win a gold medal in the 10,000m.”
Young Spaniard takes his first Olympics by storm in the triple jump
Jordan Alejandro Díaz Fortún was under the bright lights of an Olympic final for the first time. But no matter.
Díaz Fortún, who had the longest triple jump this year among the competitors coming into the day, went 17.86 meters on his first jump of the day and that was enough for gold. He beat out Pedro Pichardo of Portugal, the defending Olympic champion, by a mere two centimeters.
Díaz Fortún had previously wanted to quit the sport as a child after many of his friends stopped competing in track and field. But his mother made him keep going so he wouldn’t play video games all day – and now he’s got a gold medal to come home with.
For Pichardo, the defeat was a tough pill to swallow for the Portuguese.
“Sadly, it didn’t turn out as I hoped, but this is how competitions are, and in (the Olympics), you cannot make any mistakes,” he said. “I made a lot of them and I paid for them. I lost the gold medal.”
It’s not clear if the Tokyo gold medalist will retire after the final, telling reporters, “I really don’t know if I want to finish my career here. In my head, it’s making sense to stop my career here. I still have to talk about it with my family, but I’m not really motivated to go on. I need to think about it.”
Rai Benjamin crushes longtime rival in the 400-meter hurdles
It’s a potential changing of the guard moment in the 400-meter hurdles.
Rai Benjamin finished second to Karsten Warholm of Norway in Tokyo, watching as the Norwegian set a world record to take the gold in this race. Over the last two years, each had won a world championship in the 400-meter hurdles, with Warholm coming into the Olympics as the world No. 1 and the world champion.
But Benjamin simply torched him on Friday night.
In the final event of the evening, Benjamin finished in 46.46 seconds and never looked seriously troubled by his Norwegian rival. Warholm came across the finish line six-tenths of a second after Benjamin, only just holding off Alison dos Santos of Brazil in the final stretch.
“I got it done. I finally got it done. In a way, the weight has been lifted. This color of the medal has eluded me for so long, and to get it done in this fashion, in front of my friends and family just means so much to me,” Benjamin said after.
“I don’t think I ever doubted it, it was more about staying patient and keep showing up every day. I told myself, ‘It has to go my way at some point.’ It went my way today and that’s all I can ask for.”
Benjamin said he landed awkwardly off the seventh hurdle of the race and he was worried he might fall going into the eighth. On the 10th hurdle, he had to reach for the obstacle and switch legs to make his leap. But he knew once he got into the final stretch that he was on his way to gold.
“I heard him when we got to five. I was like ‘OK cool, just stay calm, stay patient.’ I know my last 200 is lethal and I know that I can outrun anyone at that point in the race. I just relied on that, trusted what I’ve done all season. That was the game changer for me today,” he said of racing Warholm.
“The whole goal is to come here to win. He wanted to win, everyone in that field wanted to win. It wasn’t going to be given to anyone, I had to come out and take it.”
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