The men’s 4×100 relay team once again struggled at an Olympics, finishing next to last in the finals in Paris due to a bad pass of the baton between Christian Coleman and Kenny Bednarek, mostly dooming the rest of the legs of the race won by Canada’s squad.
The baton pass continues to be the issue. Per Sports Illustrated in 2016: “The U.S. recent reign of relay terror began when Darvis (Doc) Patton and [Tyson] Gay botched the anchor handoff in Beijing and [Usain] Bolt skated away to his third gold of those games.” The broadcast on Friday talked about how practices seemed to be going well, but the answer is also that a baton pass in the 4×100 is really hard.
Unlike in the longer relays such as the 4×400, a handoff in the 4×100 happens when both runners are at or near top speed. Also, the handoff is blind — the runner who is receiving the baton isn’t looking at the person who is handing it to him, which makes communication critical.
Finally, most elite teams try to hand off toward the latter part of the track’s exchange zone so the receiving runner is running at top speed when he gets the baton. That strategy means the baton hardly slows down, but the runners have little room for error.
