By Sudipto Ganguly and Omar Mohammed
TOKYO (Reuters) -The United States men’s team won their first gold on the track at the Tokyo Olympics on Saturday, clinching the 4×400 metres relay by a huge margin and ending a drought at the Games that had sparked criticism back home.
It was the final chance for the American men to avoid the ignominy of not winning a gold on the track for the first time in the Games’ 125-year history — barring their boycott year in 1980 — and they left it to the very last event.
The American team of Michael Cherry, Michael Norman, Bryce Deadmon and Rai Benjamin took the lead early and surged ahead of their challengers to take victory in a season’s best 2:55.70.
Netherlands took the silver medal in a national record time of 2:57.18 and Botswana claimed the bronze.
Ryan Crouser who retained his title in the men’s shot put on Thursday, breaking his own Olympic record three times in the final, was the only gold medallist for the Americans in track and field until Saturday’s race.
The performance by the U.S. men’s track team drew criticism from some of the big names of American athletics, including Carl Lewis, the nine-times Olympic gold medallist, who described some of the performances as “a total embarrassment”.
The win on Saturday, a season’s best performance, helped to end the barren run ahead of the Dutch and Botswana who produced an African record to grab bronze.
Ramsey Angela of the Netherlands came storming through in the last stretch and, with 100m remaining, pushed himself all the way and pipped Botswana to the silver medal in a national record performance.
(Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly and Omar Mohammed; editing by Mitch Phillips, Ed Osmond and Clare Fallon)
