BEIJING — You might have figured Muna Lee to be crushed, having missed a bronze medal by one-hundredth of a second. But she was still smiling after the women's 200-meter final.
"I'm really happy with it," she said of her personal-best time of 22.01 seconds, which earned her fourth place. "I pretty much just ran with my eyes closed until about 150. It was my best 200 in a long time, and I ran all the way through. That's what I was working for."
Jamaica's Veronica Campbell-Brown won the gold in 21.74 seconds, which was her personal best. American Allyson Felix repeated her silver-medal performance from the Athens Games four year ago, as she ran a 21.93.
And Kerron Stewart, who won bronze in the 100 on Sunday, took third in the 200 (22.00). She finished ahead of Lee in less than a blink.
Unfortunately for Lee, her last chance at an Olympic medal here then ended later, when she wasn't even on the track. It was a disastrous night in the relays for the United States. Both the men's and women's 4x100 squads dropped the baton on the final handoff and did not qualify for the finals.
Lee, who won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympics trials and finished fifth in the Olympic 100, was expected to sub in for the 4x100 final had the U.S. made it. But the qualifying team of Angela Williams, Mechelle Lewis, Torri Edwards and Lauryn Williams was not able to get the Americans there.
On the last pass, between Edwards and Lauryn Williams, the baton fell to the track and neither said she knew exactly what went wrong.
"We came out here to run our hearts out and get some revenge towards Jamaica," Lauryn Williams said. "But you gotta do the first round before you do the (final). No excuses. We trained hard. We had great chemistry.
"We saw a few of the replays. It looked like it was a good handoff. I'm telling people the stick had a mind of its own. It wasn't me, it wasn't Torri. Maybe it was electronic. It had a bug in it. It jumped out."
She was trying to make light of a tremendous disappointment for the American women, who now have bungled the 4x100 for the second Olympics in a row. In 2004, the handoff between Marion Jones and Lauryn Williams happened outside the safety zone in the final, and the U.S. was disqualified. The Americans won bronze in 2000 but were stripped of that medal after the subsequent revelation of Jones' doping violations.
The American women had won the Olympic 4x100 four times in row – 1984, '88, '92, '96 - before that.
Meanwhile, the U.S. men's handoff problem Thursday happened between third leg Darvis Patton and anchor Tyson Gay, who took the blame. The U.S. men also had handoff problems at the 2004 Olympics in the 4x100 but at least were able to earn a silver medal there.
Jamaica's men's and women's 4x100 relay teams qualified for the final. The men did it without Usain Bolt, who was rested for the final.
With Campbell-Brown's victory in the women's 200, Jamaica completed the sweep of golds of the short sprints - only the fourth time that's happened in Olympic history. Previously, the United States was the only nation to do it: in 1964, 1984 and 1988.
Shelly-Ann Fraser won the women's 100, and Bolt raced to world records in taking the men's 100 and 200. Now Jamaica will try to sweep the 4x100 relays, which will be contested Friday night (Friday morning in the United States).