RSS Feed
Follow us on Twitter
Star YouTube Channel
Jamaica's world record setting men's sprint relay quartet poses at the display board showing the new mark, 37.04 seconds, on the final day of the IAAF World Championships in Daegu, South Korea, yesterday. The members of the team (from left) are Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Yohan Blake and Usain Bolt. The team smashed the 37.10 set by Jamaica at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. - Ricardo Makyn
DAEGU, South Korea:
Jamaica's men 4x100m relay team provided the brightest spark of the 13th IAAF World Championships in Athletics with a world record 37.04 seconds run in the final, erasing their own mark and closing the country's campaign with nine medals, but for anchor man Usain Bolt, it was not the perfect race.
Bolt, who kept his cool after receiving the baton from clubmate and good friend Yohan Blake amidst a pile up of bodies, as American Darvis Patton crashed into Great Britain and Northern Ireland's Marlon Devonish at the last exchange as both teams failed to finish, says he would have preferred to have the USA team in the race even if he doesn't think they could stop his Jamaican sprint relay machine.
"I always look forward to the best competition and I think the US were one of the great teams in the race and a lot of people may say that if the US finished the race it would have been different but I don't think so," said Bolt.
"But yes it would have been great to see a great team like theirs finish the race, and yes I'm sorry that they dropped the baton, that's gotta hurt, and it's always rough to see another athlete getting hurt," he added before touching on the ever-relevant topic of the perceived Jamaica-USA sprinting rivalry.
"We are two great sprint nations and I think we just both train hard and try to be the best, we will always compete against each other, I won't say it's a rivalry but we both just want to be the best," said Bolt, who was anchoring Jamaica at a major championships for the first time in the absence of the injured Asafa Powell.
Michael Frater, who was winning his third major relay title with two of those coming in world record times, credited the experience of the team and their focus on proper baton management as keys to the result. Three members of the team where also involved when Jamaica first broke the world record in Beijing at the 2008 Olympic Games.
"Handoffs were the key for us, as long as we got the stick around we knew we had a pretty good chance of winning the gold medal and breaking the world record," Frater said. "We were out there with four guys that have gone under 9.90 seconds so for us it was just to get the stick around."
"It was a good race and we have to thank God for bringing us through, going out there we just wanted to hand off the stick well we weren't really going out there to break records but to first of all get the stick around," Nesta Carter said.
Yohan Blake, the only member of this year's world record-breaking team who was not involved in Beijing, thanked the team and expressed delight with his first work record victory.
"To have two gold medals and one world record, I just thank God and the entire team, I feel over the moon right now," Blake beamed.
The Jamaicans benefited from a solid first leg from Carter before Frater established a clear advantage on the backstretch. Blake, not known as a great curve runner, ran power-fully on the third leg, handing over to Bolt, who destroyed the anchor, running with ferocity through the line, to give Jamaica their second relay world record in three years, a feat they managed without the third fastest man in history Asafa Powell.
Members of Jamaica's men's 4x100 metres relay team - (from left) Nesta Carter, Michael Frater, Yohan Blake and Usain Bolt - display their gold medals after they brought the curtain down on the 13th IAAF World Championships yesterday with a sizzling 37.04 seconds world record. France were way back in second in 38.20 and St Kitts and Nevis third in 38.49. The United States and Great Britain failed to finish following a last leg collision. 
