Team USA’s track and field athletes said goodbye to the Paris Olympics in style, taking home five medals — three gold, one silver and one bronze — on the penultimate day of the Games.
Both the men’s and the women’s relay teams won gold in the 4×400-meter relay finals on Saturday, Aug. 10, and Masai Russell also came in first in the women’s 100-meter hurdles final.
Shelby McEwen won silver in the men’s high jump final, while Grant Fisher came in third in the men’s 5000-meter final.
The relay teams closed out the night with a bang, though, with the men besting Botswana and the women taking the win over the Netherlands.
Rai Benjamin, Christopher Bailey, Bryce Deadmon and Vernon Norwood even set an Olympic record in the men’s final, finishing with a time of 2:54.43.
The women’s team, meanwhile, gave stars Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone and Gabby Thomas additional gold medals, which they won alongside teammates Shamier Little and Alexis Holmes.
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McEwan kicked things off for the U.S. on Saturday, setting a personal best with a high jump score of 2.36, coming just shy of New Zealand’s Hamish Kerr’s score.
Then in the 100-meter hurdles, Russell smashed the competition, edging out France’s Cyrena Samba-Mayela in front of a hometown crowd. Team USA’s Grace Stark came in fifth place, and Alaysha Johnson finished in seventh.
Fisher finished third behind Norway’s Jakob Ingebrigtsen and Kenya’s Ronald Kwemoi.
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The win for the men’s 4×400-meter relay team brought some redemption for Team USA following a disappointing performance from the 4×100-meter relay on Friday, during which the team was disqualified after a botched baton handoff.
Even without the disqualification, the men’s relay team would have finished in the second-to-last place.
After the 4×100-meter men’s relay team’s performance, the runners — Christian Coleman, Kenny Bednarek, Kyree King and Fred Kerley — said they “just didn’t get it done” on the track. The group was notably without teammate Noah Lyles, who said he tested positive for Covid-19 earlier in the week.
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