Baton disaster kills off medal

Britain's Darren Campbell had been saving himself, confident that his fellow relay sprinters would ease through the first qualifying round. He was wrong. A catastrophic baton change outside the designated area wrote off the squad's hopes of at least a silver medal.

Campbell, who took silver in the 200m behind the Greek Konstantinos Kenteris on Thursday, was rested for the first round and replaced by Allyn Condon. He himself would have run later in the day.

"I didn't celebrate my medal because of the relay," he said. "Now I feel like a man who has won a silver and lost another. I'm bitterly disappointed."

None of his team-mates apologised. There was no need; they all felt equally bad. "We are a team," said Campbell, "so nobody takes the blame. We've had three good years with no mistakes. I just wish I could have gone back and finished the job in the relay."

Britain, the silver medal winners in last year's world championship, were regarded as the team most likely to push the United States, who qualified easily in 38.15sec.

Condon ran the first leg but his handover left Jason Gardener at a standstill and way off the pace. Gardener and Marlon Devonish made some ground until another mix-up on the final handover left Dwain Chambers, fourth in the 100m final, with no chance and he jogged over the line last. "It was over from change one," he said.

The failure was an unexpected twist for Britain's men, who have re-established themselves as a force in world sprinting during these games. As well as Chambers and Campbell in the 100m final, Christian Malcolm finished fifth in the 200m final.

Britain's head coach of athletics, Max Jones, said: "They are devastated. They've worked as a team of six or seven, attended relay practices, done well at previous championships but it just wasn't to be.

"It could have been the icing on the cake: we've had a great games and the 4x100m was one of our medal bankers. We tried to make it safety first, which the Americans have just done splendidly. But obviously it didn't work."

He refused to point the finger at anyone. "It's the first time in three years we haven't got the baton round. There's a lot of pressure out there:100,000 people in the stadium, and the team outside was running well.

"I think they got to the point where they could have changed cleanly after a splendid start and we'd have romped round. But we just missed a hand and I couldn't say whose fault it was, there's two runners there.

"We do practise a lot of scenarios, because people get hamstring pulls or whatever and you don't usually end up with the final four you start off with."

The team failed to learn its Atlanta lessons. Four years ago Britain, regarded as medal contenders, rested Linford Christie in the sprint relay heats and the quartet crashed out after dropping the baton.

The British women's 4x100m relay team of Joice Maduaka, Marcia Richardson, Sarah Wilhelmy and Shani Anderson qualified for the semis as one of the fastest losers after setting a season's best time of 43.26sec.

The men's 4 x 400m team of Jared Deacon, Daniel Caines, Jamie Baulch and Iwan Thomas clocked 3min 04.35sec to hold off France by 0.01sec and clinch one of two automatic qualifying places.