Another day, another gold medal for Team USA's fastest athletes.
On Friday, four of the United States' best sprinters lined up on the track at Stade de France in Paris for the women's 4x100-meter relay. Historically, the women have gone back and forth with Jamaica in this event in a longstanding rivalry; they came in a disappointing second to Jamaica at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Not today. With 100-meter star Sha'Carri Richardson anchoring—at one point during the final meters of the race, she looked over at her competition and grinned—Team USA pulled ahead of silver medalists Great Britain and won with a time of 41.78.
"Realizing that when we won, the USA ladies, it was a phenomenal feeling for all of us," Richardson said following the race.
The victory was redemption for Richardson after her surprise silver-medal performance in the women's 100 meters. It was also just another in a string of great wins for American sprinters at these Olympics—just two hours later, Rai Benjamin won the men's 400-meter hurdles—in perhaps their most dominant performance in decades.
It's not that Team USA has disappointed at past Olympics. Counting field events, they've topped the athletics medal table at every Olympics since 1984. Some of the greatest legends of the sport were American—Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson are two of the most dominant male track athletes of all time, and Florence Delorez Griffith Joyner still holds the women's 100-meter and 200-meter world records 36 years after breaking them.
It's just that at these Olympics, the Americans have topped multiple podiums that were once reserved for their biggest sprinting rivals. In Tokyo, the team fell short of gold in all of the highest-profile individual sprinting events. Here, with three events still left to go, they have seven sprinting titles—defined here as any sprint or hurdle event that has a maximum length of 400 meters per athlete—the most since 1996. They have earned 16 medals total in the sprinting events. On Saturday, both the men and women are favored to win the 4x400 meter relay events as well.
Though the Americans won't come close to their dominance in 1984 when they won 13 sprinting golds and 24 sprinting medals—Lewis, Edwin Moses and Valerie Brisco-Hooks were among the many stars of that team—2024 has been arguably their best year since.
This team is taking titles that haven't belonged to the U.S. in generations. Noah Lyles' men's 100-meter win was the first gold for the U.S. in that event in 20 years; his teammate Fred Kerley took bronze. In 2008, the U.S. had its seventh—and final—consecutive victory in the men's 400 meters, until Quincy Hall won the event this week. When Gabby Thomas won the women's 200 meters and Brittany Brown won bronze, they edged ahead of Jamaica for most Olympic medals ever in that event.
And of course, Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone broke the world record in the women's 400-meter hurdles, well ahead of compatriot Anna Cockrell, on Thursday. It's telling that many of these podiums have more than one American on them—the U.S. also went one-two in the men's 110-meter hurdles with Grant Holloway and Daniel Roberts. Not only does this team have some of the fastest athletes on earth, it also has depth.
To be sure, the U.S. is taking advantage of a weakened Jamaican team at these Olympics. To this day, Usain Bolt's retirement leaves a talent vacuum for Jamaica in the shortest races. The Jamaican men didn't even qualify for the 4x100 meters here after struggling with a handoff. And the team has had a string of bad luck with injuries, which kept the three Jamaican women who swept the 100-meter podium in Tokyo from competing in Paris. Top sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah is out with an Achilles injury that she suffered earlier this summer; Shericka Jackson is also absent from these Games. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce dropped out of the Games moments before the 100-meter semifinals.
Every program has its ups and downs. The U.S. swim team, for example, disappointed in Paris with a lackluster performance compared to what we're used to (only 28 medals!).
The U.S. track athletes, meanwhile, are experiencing a high, which has been thrilling to watch. It's not limited to sprinting, either. Cole Hocker upset to win the men's 1,500 meters. In the men's 10K, Grant Fisher won bronze, the U.S.'s fourth medal ever in the event. Kenneth Rooks medaled in steeplechase, winning only the sixth U.S. medal since the event debuted in 1920.
Since it can't all be sunshine and rainbows, the men's 4x100 meter relay team was disqualified Friday after yet another botched handoff. Despite qualifying at the head of the field, they failed to medal for the fifth Olympics in a row. And the U.S. still lags in some of the longest races—since the women's 5,000 meters was first contested at the 1996 Olympics, no American woman has medaled.
Who knows, maybe they're saving their best for the next Olympics, where they can win on home turf.
Editor's note: On Saturday, Team USA won three more golds that fit our criteria for sprint events: women's 100-meter hurdles (Masai Russell), 4x400 men's relay and 4x400 women's relay. That gives the U.S. 10 golds in such events, the most it has had since 1984.
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