Jamaicans celebrate historic women’s relay victory

ATHENS: Jamaica, boasting three 100-metre finalists in their line-up, logged their first ever Olympic sprint relay victory when they captured the event with a sizzling national record time yesterday. With 200-metre gold medallist Veronica Campbell on the final leg, the Jamaicans sped to victory in 41.73 seconds after a botched baton change by the highly fancied United States sent them clear on the third leg at the Olympic Stadium. “I am so happy that we are able to come out here and win the gold medal,” Campbell told CMC Sport.  “We’ve been dreaming about it the whole week.” But there was also a huge disappointment for Jamaica Friday night, their 4 x 400-metre men’s team, heavy favourites for a medal, suffered disqualification in the first round.

Highly fancied United States and Jamaica led the field for the first half of the women’s sprint relay, when Tayna Lawrence (Jamaica) and Angela Williams (USA) appeared to edge ahead of their rivals on the first leg. Marion Jones kept the USA strong down the backstretch, while the 20-year-old Jamaican Sherone Simpson kept pace impressively with Jones and even appeared to outrun her in the closing stages of the leg. The United States, who became favourites when they ran 41.67 seconds the world’s fourth fastest time ever —  in Thursday’s preliminaries, lost their chance when Jones failed to complete the hand-over with the young Lauryn Williams for the third leg. The Jamaicans powered clear with Aleen Bailey on the third leg and Campbell’s rapid finish gave Russian finisher Larisa Kruglova no chance. The run erased the Jamaicans’ previous national mark of 41.94, while Russia took second in 42.27. France got third in 42.54, and the Bahamas, who were champions in Sydney four years ago, got fourth in 42.69.

This is the biggest gold medal haul ever in Olympic history for the English-speaking Caribbean. They had done two twice before —  1952 in Helsinki with Jamaica’s George Rhoden and the Jamaica men’s mile relay team, and 1976 in Montreal when TT’ s Hasely Crawford won the 100 metres and Jamaican Don Quarrie took the 200 metres. The relay triumph added to other CARICOM victories in midweek by Campbell (200) and Bahamian Tonique Williams-Darling (400). Earlier, Maurice Wignall became the second Jamaican to appear in a men’s 110-metre hurdles Olympic final, and narrowly missed a medal. China’s Xiang Liu won the event in 12.91, a new Olympic record and world record-equalling run. American Terrence Trammell, a silver medallist in Sydney four years ago, got second in 13.18, and defending champion Anier Garcia, of Cuba, placed third in 13.20 seconds.

Wignall was only one-hundredths of a second further behind in fourth in 13.21 seconds, the same time clocked by Latvia’s Stanislavs Olijars. Only three-hundredths of a second separated second from fifth in a tight battle for the medals behind the Chinese. In the men’s 4 x 100-metre relay qualifying, the Nigerians had a smart run and won the first heat in 38.27 seconds with 1994 world junior champion Deji Aliu on anchor. Poland placed second in 38.47 followed by Australia in 38.49, and Trinidad and Tobago ran 38.53 seconds to equal their national record and advance as one of the fastest losers. Nicconnor Alexander ran the lead-off leg, and handed to Marc Burns, while Ato Boldon ran the third leg and Darrel Brown finished for TT, who were bronze medallists at the 2001 World Championship in Canada. (CMC)