By Thursday night, that had evolved into a great 24 hours.
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United States’ Allyson Felix leaves the track after dropping the baton in a women’s 4×100-meter relay during the athletics competitions of the 2016 Summer Olympics at the Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016. The team was running alone on the track, seeking to qualify after successfully protesting that they were bumped in qualifiers. With just the clock and the crowd for company, the Americans took the baton around in 41.77 seconds to reach the final.
“So we throw the shot put 14 metres and they throw 22 metres, and they think “that’s not very special” or you see us run 1,500 (metres) in 4.20 and we are lying on the ground dying, and people out there can run it a lot faster”, he said. “Our coach said before we went out there, ‘It’s just like practice, just the whole world will be watching. Be patient. and just do your job'”. He’s 19-0 in those races, and a flawless 8-0 in the Olympics.
Canada´s Andre De Grasse took silver in 20.02sec, just ahead of France´s Christophe Lemaitre, who nicked bronze in 20.12.
Canada’s track and field resurgence continued Thursday night as Damian Warner claimed bronze in the decathlon.
Eaton has now won successive Olympic and world titles to confirm his status at the best all-around athlete in the world.
Crouser beat teammate and 2015 world champion Joe Kovacs, in second place, with New Zealand’s Tomas Walsh taking bronze. He’s the first man to defend the Olympic decathlon title in 32 years.
Dalilah Muhammad kept the USA total ticking on with gold in the women’s 400-meter hurdles and Ashley Spencer added a bronze, with another American 1-2 only just thwarted by Denmark’s Sara Slott Petersen.
With only one event remaining, Eaton had a slim lead on Kevin Mayer of France, but Eaton outran Mayer in the final event, the 1,500 meters, to secure the gold medal.
South Africa’s Caster Semenya, the outright favorite for the women’s 800-meter title, qualified for the final as she breezed to victory in her semifinal heat, pretty much unchallenged, in 1 minute 58.15 seconds.
Eaton had briefly darted away from the decathlon to congratulate Clement as his teammate knelt exhausted in the midday sun after winning the hurdles, an indicator of the good feelings surging through the US track team right now.
“When I came back, I found a new love for the hurdles”, he said. So I said, ‘Ash, you have to stay with him. Clement was so confident of a first Olympic individual gold, he had his mother, Claudette, bring a star-spangled banner so he could drape it over his shoulders.
“Going into these Olympics I told myself that I wanted the gold medal”.
But Eaton moved past Mayer with 200 metres of the 1500m to go to make sure of the win.
However tough his task was, it was made easier when Javier Culson, the 2012 Olympic bronze medalist from Puerto Rico, was disqualified for a false-start.
Clement has two world championship gold medals, but the Olympic title had eluded him. Now he has gold to go with his silver from the 2008 Beijing Games.
Boniface Mucheru Tumuti of Kenya took silver, 0.05 behind, and Cuban-born Yasmani Copello of Turkey won bronze in 47.92, both in national records. On a night where Usain Bolt won the 200, and marked a 100-200 three-peat, his greatness should not be ignored. Concentrating on not messing that up for Bolt, a Jamaica team led by Asafa Powell got into the final in an important moment for the big man’s legacy.
The sport I love most definitely made it hard to condense several incredible moments into today’s column.
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“I was throwing the javelin, and this guy comes from the fire department across the street, and he’s telling me to do all these things”, Warner said.
