Why the USA men’s 4x100 keeps losing, and how Canada beat them
In 2022 the USA 4x100 meter relay team lost in the World Championships. Which may not seem like a big deal, because the USA has lost more than a few races over the past two decades. But this loss was something different entirely because unlike all those other losses, Usain Bolt was not on the winning team. In fact, the American men dominated the short sprints, sweeping the medals in the 100 meter dash and the 200 meter dash! The team they lost to, who took out all of the fastest men in the world, was Canada. So how does a team that fast lose to anyone? The truth is that Canada did something right, that the USA has gotten wrong for years now. That mistake cost them the race. A race that might go down as the biggest underachievement, or perhaps even the greatest upset in track and field history.
Team USA is the fastest in the world
You have to know just how fast Team USA actually is, in order to see why their loss is such a big deal. There has almost never been any point in sprinting history where the USA has been this fast, and this far ahead of their competition. In the 100 meter dash, Fred Kerley led an American sweep alongside Marvin Bracy, and Trayvon Bromell. All three men ran between 9.88 and 9.86, which is nearly a full tenth faster than the man in fourth place. But there were actually four American men in that 100 meter final. Christian Coleman was there. He finished sixth overall, but he was the World Champion in 2019! That means that America had 4 World Championship finalists, and no other country in the world had more than 1. Even that doesn’t tell the whole story because Kerley, Bromell, and Coleman are all ranked in the top 10 fastest men of all time in the 100 meter dash.
In the 200 meter dash Noah Lyles led America’s sweep of the 200 meter dash breaking the American record, and running the third fastest time ever in history. He was followed by Kenny Bednarek and Erriyon Knighton who are coincidentally ranked 14th and 5th overall in that event on the all-time list. Bednarek was the silver medalist in the Olympics the year before, and Knighton finished 4th. Not one country had 2 men represented in the 200 meter final either. The 4x100 meter relay is an event that should belong to the team with the fastest 4 men running around the track. Truth be told the Americans likely could have put out two separate relays that each could have brought home the gold. They would only need to pick up an alternate to finish the job, but they’ve got a lot of options to choose from. Keep in mind that 2021 Olympic finalist Ronnie Baker is still available.
Team USA has underachieved for decades
It is no secret that the American men have struggled in the 4x100 meter relay for years since 2004. That is literally the last time they won a medal at the Olympics. In fact, the medal they won in that year wasn’t even gold! The World Championships haven’t been much better. America won the gold in 2019 and the silver in 2017 and 2013. But you would have to go back to 2007 to find their next gold medal, in the “pre Usain Bolt era”. Any year that that is not already mentioned is one where America didn’t win a medal at all, and that’s normally because they found some creative way to drop the stick along the way.
Canada was never supposed to beat team USA
Canada isn’t like America. They only had one man make the finals of the 100 and the 200 meter dashes. It was Aaron Brown who finished either last or second to last in both events. He competed for USC in the NCAA but never won an NCAA championship medal while he was there. Their best runner is technically Andre De Grasse, who underperformed at the Worlds, not even breaking 10.1 in the 100 meter dash at all. But he is the Olympic champion in 2021 for the 200 meter dash. Their other two runners have never run in a major international championship final in the 100 or the 200. Brendon Rodney dominated the Northeast region of Division 1, but never finished higher than third at an NCAA championship. His signature event is actually the 200 meter dash. Yet the fourth member of their team is Jerome Blake who has never broken 10 flat in the 100 meter dash, or 20 seconds in the 200 meter dash. He is the type of spritner whom America wouldn’t even dream of having in their relay pool.
According to the math there is not one legitimate reason that the Canadian team should have knocked off the Americans based on the clock. But there is a real reason why they did. If you go all the way back to 2015 at the World Championships, you will notice that the men running for Canada are Aaron Brown, Andre De Grasse, Brendon Rodney, and a fourth runner named Justyn Warner. In 2016 it’s the same exact team again but this time the fourth runner was switched out for Akeem Haynes. By the 2021 Olympics that spot went to Jerome Blake, the same man they brought to Eugene for the World Championships in 2022. Canada maximizes their 4x100 potential quite literally because their runners actually practice together, year in and year out. The 4x100 meter relay isn’t just about having the fastest guys, but about those men getting the baton through the zones as fast as they can as well. Canada does that, so well in fact they’ve been knocking on the door of winning the entire world, with medals at each of the last 2 Olympics, when America continued to underachieve.
When I ran in college I competed for a 4x100 that broke the 41 second barrier, with four runners, who averaged only 10.7 in the 100 meter dash. In all honesty we were not the fastest team in our region for D1, but we took out a lot of them, because their fast guys couldn’t hand off a stick properly to each other. We couldn’t beat a team of 10.00 100 meter runners, but we could probably beat a bunch of 10.5 to 10.4 guys, if they didn’t really know how to work together. Which is exactly what we did. The only reason Canada is good enough to win a gold medal in any World Championship, is because the USA quite literally has so many good sprinters, they can’t figure out who to actually keep on the relay team long enough for the team to get good at it.
The Bottom Line
The 2023 World Championships will come and go. America once again appears to have the fastest four runners that any nation can put on the track. Only 2 of the men from their last championship relay entered the pool to compete again in 2023. The truth is we know who Canada is going to run in their relay. We know their names, the order their going to run in, and what they are capable of. But America right now has no idea the answers to any of those questions. It's hard to practice to be the best in the world, if you don’t even know who to invite to the practice track. So in the likely event that America messes up, Canada is a pretty solid backup pick. They have proven themselves to be trustworthy for almost a decade.
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