Gardner, USA settle for silver at World Championships

MOSCOW - Brilliant baton-passing was the key to Team USA's world-record 40.82-second women's 4x100-meter relay triumph at the 2012 London Olympic Games.

Hoping for a reprise on the concluding day of the 14th World Championships of Track and Field, a completely new American quartet got no such thing Sunday at Luzhniki Stadium.

With a mistimed second exchange between second runner Alexandria Anderson of Austin, Texas, and English Gardner of Voorhees running third, the Americans lost critical ground and momentum to front-running Jamaica and appeared to have wound up third in 42.75, behind Jamaica's winning 41.29, a World Championships record, and France's silver-medal 42.73.

But hours later they learned they had been elevated to second place in a late disqualification of the French team following a protest from the British for "changing outside their sector on the second baton exchange." France appealed the disqualification but it was turned down and the British moved up to take the bronze.

Coincidentally, the same four Americans - with Jeneba Tarmoh of Los Angeles leading off, followed by Anderson, Gardner, and Octavious Freeman of Lake Wales, Fla. - had displayed near-perfect baton-passing and run a brilliant 41.82 in winning their qualifying race two hours earlier. A 41.82 in the final would have meant silver for the Americans before the disqualification.

But their timing in the final was imperfect, bordering on disastrous. They eked out a medal, thanks mostly to Freeman's comeback anchor run.

"We definitely had our mishaps, but we went out there and we performed the way we did," said Gardner, a former star at Eastern High, who had won the NCAA 100 title for Oregon and then in the USA Nationals in June. She barely missed a medal in the individual 100 here Monday night, placing fourth in 10.96, just out of third.

"I can't explain how proud I am of all my girls, as I am about our anchor [Freeman], who didn't give up. You can't teach that, that was heart.

"I couldn't be more proud."

Anderson either slowed coming in or Gardner started off too soon on the second exchange. "You can't say it was all one or the other," said Maurice Greene, the former world 100-meter record-holder and 2000 Olympic champion. "You can probably put a little of it on both."

Team USA and France were not alone in their baton miseries. Germany, the Bahamas, and Nigeria were disqualified for baton infractions in the trials and Brazil failed to finish in the final.

Champion Jamaica was anchored by two-time Olympic 200-meter titlist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce. Its 41.29 eclipsed Team USA's 41.47 in Athens in 1997 as the Worlds meet record.