British sprinters 'gutted' they messed up

Christian Malcolm said Britain's sprinters were "gutted" at crashing out of the men's 4x100 metres relay after messing up their final baton change.  

Malcolm was leading going into the final bend of the quarter-final race, as Britain looked set to qualify comfortably for Sunday night's semis.

But anchor man Jonathan Barbour set off early and Malcolm failed to make the changeover, leaving the men's team down and out.

To add to the team's frustration, the rival teams from America, Cuba and Germany were all also disqualified, which would have left Britain as favourites to strike gold had they made it through.

It was a repeat of what happened in the event in last year's Sydney Olympics, when Britain were also disqualified for a botched changeover.

"I cannot believe this has happened to us for a second major championships in a row," said Malcolm. "We are all gutted.

"I don't know what went wrong. I just could not catch Jonathan, but it was not his fault.

"Jonathan is part of this Great Britain team. He has come up through the ranks like Mark Lewis-Francis and myself. He is European under-23 champion and has got the experience. He knows what to do.

"We have practised together back home and out here a couple of times. We were all confident we could get a medal out there but we have not done ourselves justice again."

Lewis-Francis was rested from the quarter-final heat because of a tight hamstring, but qualification looked to be assured in the hands of Dwain Chambers, Marlon Devonish, Malcolm and Barbour.

However, after three smooth changeovers, Malcolm and Barbour messed up the final leg, and Britain were out.

Malcolm then threw down the baton in anger and laid flat on his back for a few minutes in disbelief. Chambers stormed off without waiting for his team-mates, shaking his head in frustration as he walked away from the track.

This had been the event in which Britain's sprint stars had aimed to salvage some pride and make up for the disappointment of failing to win a medal in the individual 100m and 200m races.

They believed they could challenge the American team all the way for the gold medal, especially as the favourites were missing their star man, Maurice Greene.

Asked why Britain failed so often to get the baton round in sprint relays, Devonish said: "I have not got a clue. In warm-up we were going really well. We were lightning, and everything went really smoothly. The changeovers were swift.

"But that's life, and these things happen. I'm not happy and the team is extremely gutted, as you can imagine. That's two years in a row now."

Barbour would have been replaced in the later rounds, but Devonish did not believe the anchor man had buckled under the pressure.

"He seemed fine. He was all right, he's cool. He was handling the pressure quite well, and I don't know what happened - I haven't looked at it.

"I'm obviously distraught. I really wanted to run well here, especially after my final in the 200.

"I don't know why it went wrong. One more changeover and we would have been happy. We'd have been straight through to the semis, but I don't know what to say.

"We'll have to look back at it in slow motion. I can't tell you now - it just didn't happen. To look at it so quickly, I can't tell, but I'm gutted."