Just before Bolt picked up his final gold medal of the 2016 Olympics in the men’s 4×100 meter relay, Allyson Felix and the US women took the track seeking their own dominance in the 4×100 meter final.
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Once there, Bartoletta, the individual long jump champion at these Games, blasted from the blocks to hand over to Felix, then Gardner and finally Bowie as the team scorched to a 40.82 victory – a time second only to the world record they set in London 2012. They weren’t flawless but Felix got the USA out of what could have been a very big jam.
Also Friday, Shelby Houlihan of Portland’s Bowerman Track Club finished 11th in the women’s 5,000 meters, crossing in 15 minutes, 8.89 seconds.
Felix also won silver in the 400m earlier this week, a feat that saw her become the most decorated female Olympian in USA track and field history, breaking her tie with Jackie Joyner-Kersee, with a total of seven medals. Jamaica were second and Great Britain third.
Bolt ran the anchor leg to add the Rio relay crown to the 100 metres and 200 metres titles he had already won for a third straight Games.
Only the gold-medal winning U.S. team at the 2012 London Games has gone faster.
The only other track and field medal up for grabs Friday was the men’s hammer throw with Tajikistan’s Dilshod Nazarov edging out Ivan Tsikhan of Belarus and Poland’s Wojciech Nowicki with a throw of 78.68m.
It’s the ninth total medal, and sixth gold (five in relays), for Felix, the most decorated USA female track and field Olympian and tied with Merlene Ottey for most overall.
This has been an adjust-on-the-fly year for Felix: her failure to make the team for the 200 meters, her jaw-dropping silver-medal moment when a diving sprinter from the Bahamas beat her in the 400 and more. It could be better than London four years ago, when the Americans brought home 29 medals.
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English Gardner and her 4×100 teammates had an interesting journey to the gold medal in the relay race.
