A day after both the U.S. men’s and women’s 4x100m relay teams mishandled a baton exchange in their respective qualifying heats, the heavily favored Jamaican women’s 4x100m team fumbled its second hand off and failed to finish the race. Their miscue unfortunately affected the Great Britain team, which also failed to finish.
I don’t remember seeing this many baton drops in one Olympics. The theory is that a lack of practice and familiarity amongst the team members is the root cause. Given the difficulty of handing something off while running at a full sprint, practice would probably help.
Russia went on to win the gold medal.
