WHILE the British sprint quartet did not manage to get the baton round the 400m of the final of the sprint relay, Usain Bolt can do no more to lift his sport out of the mire of recent controversy than he has in the past week in Beijing.
Having twice repelled the threat of Justin Gatlin, survived a demolition by Segway during his celebrations after the 200m and confirmed his status as the greatest sprinter on the planet, Bolt added the 4x100m sprint title to his list in the Bird’s Nest Stadium last night, his tenth world title in all and, including London 2012, his 11th successive title at major championships.
The Jamaican four of Nesta Carter, Asafa Powell, Nickel Ashmeade and Bolt were actually struggling to overhaul the Americans, with the British vying for third with China when both the Americans and the British faltered at the final takeover.
After finishing second to their usual rivals, the Americans were later disqualified for stepping out of their lane, but Britain effectively threw away a medal with a missed changeover that sparked a furious response from James Ellington, the third leg runner.
Ellington, a fully funded relay athlete, hurled the baton into the ground and stormed off down the straight leaving C.J. Ujah, who had mistimed his start from the blocks, to drag himself back to the rest of his teammates and the very public ignominy that comes with failure in the relay arena.
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The tension came from the promotion of Ujah above Harry Aikines-Aryettey, who ran in the heat, for the final.
Ujah is clearly the quicker of the two, but he has not been a regular member of the relay squad and the switch of places seemed to anger the rest of the team.
“There’s always going to be tension when certain members feel they deserve a place in the team,” said Ellington in a scarcely disguised attack on Ujah and coach, Steve Maguire.
“For me, the relay is my life. I don’t get funding from anywhere else, so the relay funding allows me to train full-time. If we don’t perform, we get cut from funding but the people at the top keep their jobs. Yet we have no say in the team.”
The sentiment was echoed by Richard Kilty, who ran the first leg. “That wasn’t the order we wanted,” he said. “We decided on a team that was the best and then it was switched three hours before the final of a world championships.”
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Ujah, meanwhile, said: “There was 100% a medal there for the taking. That’s why I thought, ‘don’t push out too fast’. But I never got the baton, even though I slowed down. I don’t really understand it.”
Ellington attempted to dampen any suggestions of a rift in the camp afterwards, writing on Twitter: “We win together and lose together, no division we are all frustrated.”
He continued by hitting back at online criticism, writing: “People on social media are so quick to slag us off when they have no idea what it takes to do what we do. And what’s even worse is when EX athletes wanna put their 2 pence in.”
The defeat is a reminder of the bad old days when talented British sprinters regularly failed to get the baton round. The one exception came on a memorable night in Athens 2004 when a GB quartet defeated a crack American team with a well-planned and brilliantly executed race.
Led by the incomparable Bolt, the Jamaicans had no such problems. It was not their best relay by any stretch of the imagination but, with Bolt on the last leg, victory for the Jamaicans lent a delightful symmetry to the week.
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For once, though, Bolt was not the centre of attraction as he quickly realised. Having earlier in the week raised the roof for Bingtian Su, the first Chinese sprinter to reach the final of the men’s 100m, a crowd of 50,000 roared home the China quartet and just as they were absorbing the enormity of a bronze medal for their heroes, it turned into a silver with the disqualification of the Americans, who only learnt their fate at the end of a victory lap.
Seven years ago in Beijing it took Bolt just 9.69 seconds to announce himself to the world and enter Olympic folklore, but the time has come to marvel at the consistency and longevity of a career that, apart from an occasional glimpse of weariness, shows little sign of diminishing.
If Bolt regards the 200m as his personal fiefdom, condemning Gatlin not for any drugs misdemeanour but for having the temerity to suggest that he might actually wrest that title away, and the 100m as a growing chore, he relishes the chance to deflect at least some of the attention onto his teammates in the sprint relay.
He is still the main man, of course, running the final leg to swell a bulging portfolio of victory photographs and fielding most of the questions in the press conference.
Yet, one of Bolt’s great assets is his humility off the track, a trait verified by a host of British athletes, from Christine Ohuruogu to Zharnel Hughes, who have spoken of the relaxed attitude and transparency of Bolt’s training regime in the hills above Jamaica’s capital, Kingston.
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If British athletics is bracing itself for the departure of Mo Farah and Jess Ennis-Hill in the next couple of years, Jamaica will be bereft without Bolt and, on the evidence of last night, the search is still on for even the bare outline of a successor. Only Yohan Blake has come to the fore to challenge Bolt’s hegemony in recent years and he is still on a long road to recovery from injury.
The British team, though, will need to go home and lick their wounds. This is a prime time for British sprinting and they have enough firepower to be regular medallists in the sprint relays for the next major championships, even if Bolt is still king of the track.