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When Noah Lyles completed third within the 200m remaining this week, he referred to as his {hardware} “boring”. When Grant Holloway took silver within the 110m hurdles, he repeatedly used the phrase “sucks” with reporters after the race.
Each males appeared glum, upset. They’d misplaced. They’d failed. By no means thoughts that Lyles’s time was the quickest he’s run all season, that solely 16 males have ever completed the race quicker than he did this week. And we should always completely disregard the truth that Holloway’s end was all of fifty milliseconds slower than the gold medal time.
Or… ought to we? Lyles’s and Holloway’s near-misses loom massive – bigger than they need to, maybe – as a result of the US males’s observe crew will return from Tokyo with no single particular person gold medal for the primary time in trendy Olympic historical past. (That’s except for 1980, when the US didn’t attend and consequently didn’t medal in any respect.) And whereas it’s doable to surprise how that occurred, it’s additionally essential to recollect: This can be a far cry from failure.
These Olympics have been a hotbed of self-flagellation throughout many sports activities. Shoichiro Mukai, a member of Japan’s judo crew, apologized after profitable a silver medal. Kenichiro Fumita, a Japanese wrestler, sobbed after a loss within the gold medal bout – a loss that yielded him a silver. And British boxer Ben Whittaker additionally shed tears upon coming in second, calling himself a failure.
The US males haven’t gone that far of their public disappointment, and right here’s hoping they received’t. They received particular person medals within the 100m, the 200m (silver and bronze!), the 5000m, the 110m hurdles and the 400m hurdles (the place Rai Benjamin topped the earlier world report). And so they ended their meet with a relay gold within the 4x400m. The US observe and subject crew as a complete received probably the most golds of any squad at these video games, with seven. Total, they received 26 whole medals, 17 greater than Jamaica, Kenya and Poland, who’re tied for the second-most though six of the US’s seven golds have been received by the ladies’s crew.
They’ve been dominant – simply not fairly as dominant as typical, as anticipated.
Final Olympics, in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, the US introduced dwelling 32 observe and subject medals, 13 of them gold. Even with Usain Bolt sustaining his dominance within the sprints, the American males took gold within the 1500m, the 400m hurdles and the 4x400m relay. The prior Olympics, in London, the lads received just one gold on the observe, when Aries Merritt received the 110m hurdles, however there was a superb clarification: Bolt was at his peak, and Group USA additionally needed to take care of Nice Britain’s Mo Farah and Kenya’s David Rudisha in middle-distance occasions.
This time round, although, the gold-medal drought feels totally different, largely as a result of the US males have been favored in most sprints and center distance races coming into Tokyo; Group USA’s roster featured the quickest males on the earth within the 100m, 200m and 400m. And at the latest world championships, they received the 100m, 200m, 800m and 110m hurdles, giving no indication their expertise can be tailing off anytime quickly.
And possibly it didn’t. Possibly different nations simply edged a step nearer, and in sport ruled by milliseconds, the nation with probably the most collective observe expertise was edged by just a few stellar performances. In spite of everything, the US nonetheless received probably the most medals total within the males’s sprints, and the lads’s observe golds went to not one or two powerhouse nations, however to a smattering: Italy, Canada, the Bahamas, Jamaica, Norway.
After this week’s slate of less-than-perfect outcomes, just a few US athletes have expressed displeasure on the lack of an Olympic coaching camp and the tight turnaround between trials and the Video games, byproducts of the continuing Covid-19 pandemic. Officers barred athletes from shifting into the Olympic Village greater than 5 days earlier than they competed, and the US elected to not arrange its personal camp for observe and subject athletes, which another nations did. It was a call made with athletes’ well being and security in thoughts, however it might even have bungled coaching and athletes’ acclimation to a overseas nation.
And there are different explanations for the gold-medal drought, too. Christian Coleman, the quickest man on the US crew, was banned from the Video games after he missed a drug take a look at in late 2019. He’d have been closely favored within the 100m and would possibly’ve given the lads’s 4x100m relay, which didn’t medal after a botched handoff, a lift.
The US crew can be comparatively inexperienced, and in a sport the place stars typically compete in two, three, 4 and even (in Allyson Felix’s case) 5 Video games, youth can at occasions be a drawback. In 2016, greater than half the gold medalists in males’s observe occasions had prior Olympic expertise.
A lot of the US crew must be again for 2024, resulting from their age and shorter turnaround time between the Video games. They’ll be out to show this summer time was solely an aberration, and earlier than overreacting, maybe they – and we – ought to take heed to Michael Cherry, the sprinter who completed fourth within the 400m – after which received gold within the 4x400m relay.
“An Olympic medal is an Olympic medal,” he informed reporters after the race. “You need gold, however if you happen to can come out with something that’s nice.”
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