Olympics: Jamaica seal sprint Grand Slam, US flop in relays
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 05:18:00 08/22/2008
BEIJING -- Jamaica completed a sprint grand slam and bungling United States teams crashed out of the relays on a day of Olympic heroes and villains on Thursday.
Veronica Campbell-Brown's defense of her 200 meters title gave Jamaica all four sprint golds after Usain Bolt raced into a class of his own taking the men's 100m-200m double in world-record time and Shelly-Ann Fraser won the women's 100m.
For the first time since the boycotted 1980 Moscow Games the United States hasn't won at least one of the four glamour sprints.
Their miserable Games continued in the men's and women's 4x100 heats when both US teams dropped the baton at the final change and failed to qualify.
As Campbell-Brown became a Games hero, so too did Dutch swimmer Maarten van der Weijden who beat life-threatening leukemia to win the grueling swimming marathon.
Heptathlon silver medallist Lyudmila Blonska, meanwhile, looks set to be banned for life for a second doping offence and four riders were disqualified from the equestrian jumping final when their horses failed drugs tests.
With torrential rain sweeping the Games city for much of the 14th day, the United States were on the verge of handing over their mantle of Olympic supremacy to China.
The Games hosts have 46 gold medals to 29 for the USA, 17 for Great Britain and Russia on 16.
Campbell-Brown powered out of the blocks and had second-placed American Allyson Felix covered by the halfway mark in the 200m.
"It's been great to see Jamaica get a clean sweep of the sprints," she said before returning to the track to anchor Jamaica as they qualified for the women's 4x100m final. The Jamaican men also qualified.
It was left to LaShawn Merritt to save face for the United States on the track as he led a US sweep of the men's 400m final beating home defending champion Jeremy Wariner while David Neville stumbled over the line for third.
It was not all plaudits for Jamaica as Bolt drew a rebuke from IOC President Jacques Rogge who was not impressed with the sprint king's showmanship at the end of races and said he should shake hands instead.
"That would be more in the spirit of the Olympic ideal," said Rogge.
Ukranian heptathlete Blonska, who failed her A sample, was removed from the women's long jump final after her B sample was tested ahead of an International Olympic Committee (IOC) announcement on Friday.
"Common sense would dictate that it looks likely to be a formality to disqualify her," said an IOC source.
Blonska's is the fifth drugs case involving athletes while horses from Brazil, Ireland, Germany and Norway also failed doping tests.
In one of the triumphs of the games, Dutch swimmer van der Weijden, 27, likened his 10-kilometer swim victory to his battle against cancer seven years ago.
"It teaches you to be patient when you are lying in a hospital bed and that was almost the same strategy I chose here to wait for my chance in the pack," he said.
Cuba's world record holder Dayron Robles easily won the men's 110m hurdles but received a subdued ovation from the largely patriotic Chinese crowd after their national icon Liu Xiang withdrew in the heats with a foot injury.
While the USA had woes on the track and were upset by Japan 3-1 in the last Olympic softball final, their peerless women's volleyball duo Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor recorded their 108th consecutive victory beating China's Tian Jia and Wang Jie 21-18, 21-18 in the final.
The US women's football team then boosted the medal count with a 1-0 extra-time win over Brazil in the final to defend the gold they won in Athens.
Chinese teenager Chen Ruolin won the women's 10m platform diving final to give China their only gold of the day but their seventh from seven diving events.
Great Britain, enjoying their best Olympics since London in 1908 won their fourth yachting gold from 11 classes when Ian Percy and Andrew Simpson took the men's Star title.
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