Record Relays: USA Women Smash 4x100m World Best, Men See Streak Stop

Olympics 2012, Women's 1500m Results: American Morgan Uceny Takes Fall As Turkey Wins Gold

Morgan Uceny's 1500m run ended the same way her run at the 2011 World Championships ended: with her on the ground, no chance of winning, due to no fault of her own.

The race was tight. That's not a big problem in races of less than a track length, where runners each get their own lanes. But in distance races, where all the runners find themselves bunched together along the furthest inside lane jockeying for position, accidents can happen: runners legs can clip each other, and when that happens, runners fall. A runner caught Uceny's knee with one of her strides with less than a lap to go, Uceny tumbled to the ground, and just like that, her Olympics were over. If this had been a qualifying round, she could have appealed, as Oscar Pistorius' 4x400 team did to earn a spot in the final of that relay, but no such luck in the finals.

Her anguish after losing will be able to fill the "agony of defeat" portion of slideshows for years to come. Uceny wasn't a favorite to win gold, but she had a shot at medaling. Luckily, she wasn't injured, but she leaves London without having had a real chance at winning.

Uceny would've been the first American woman to medal in the distance: in her place, two non-traditional track champions took her spot, as Turkey's Asli Cakir Alptekin and Gamze Bulut took gold and silver, while Bahrain's Maryam Yusuf Jamal won bronze. American Shannon Rowbury took sixth.

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2012 Olympics, Men's 4x400 Relay Results: United States Misses Gold For 1st Time Since 1980

The United States missed out on a gold medal in the men's 4x400-meter relay for the first time since 1980, finishing behind the Bahamas by just .33 seconds. Team USA did not participate in the event 32 years ago, or any event due to a boycott of the Moscow games. On Thursday, however, they were simply beat, fair and square.

Tony McQuay passed the baton to Angelo Taylor with the lead at the start of the anchor leg. Taylor anchored the gold medal foursome in Beijing, but was chased down and finally passed by Ramon Miller of the Bahamas within the final 75 meters of the race. The island nation was exuberant afterwards.

"For me, it's a joyful feeling," said Chris Brown, who ran the opening leg. "It's been a long journey for me. I've been here for a long time and this is my first Olympic gold medal. I've gotten silver and bronze before. It took me a long time. The United States is a tough team to beat."

The United States' relay team has had a rocky time in London, outside of the race itself. Lashawn Merritt and Jeremy Wariner both had to be pulled out of the race before preliminaries due to injuries. To make matters worse, leadoff runner Manteo Mitchell broke his left fibula while in the final 200 meters of his leg during preliminaries. Mitchell finished his portion of the race, somehow, but had to watch his teammates race the finals in a walking boot. He celebrated nonetheless.

"I realize the significance," said Mitchell, who will receive a silver medal because he ran in the preliminaries. "But it's not about me. It's not about you. That's how Team USA operates. A lot of people on outside looking in think that this is an individual sport. But in the end, we're here to serve our countries."

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France's Renaud Lavillenie Wins Pole Vault Gold With Olympic Record

France's Renaud Lavillenie missed hardly any jumps in the pole vault competition at the 2012 London Olympics, and when it came time for his second attempt at an Olympic-record 19.58 feet (5.97 meters), he cooly planted his pole into the ground and vaulted himself into history and past two German vaulters for the gold medal. As is customary and exclusive to paul vaulting, he started roaring in celebration on the way down, knowing he had reached heights seldom touched in outdoor competition.

Germans Bjorn Otto and Raphael Holzdeppe earned silver and bronze, respectively, completing leaps of 19.38 feet each. Defending Olympic champion Steven Hooker of Australia didn't complete a single jump, a stunning turn of events for those who haven't been following the sport (you know, all of us), but he's lost his tremendous form over the past year or so. The only American in the final, Brad Walker, also didn't complete a vault.

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Men's 4x400m Relay Final: Bahamas Wins, U.S. Misses Gold For First Time Since 1980

The United States has been the dominant force in the men's 4x400-meter relay for the entirety of the event's Olympic existence. But an upstart Bahamas quartet turned the tables on the U.S. on Friday, winning the first track gold in the nation's history and stopping nearly three decades of American dominance.

Tony McQuay gave Angelo Taylor the baton and the lead entering the anchor leg of the relay, but Taylor, who won gold in the event in Beijing, was chased down by Ramon Miller on the last lap and passed in the final 75 meters. The Bahamas finished in 2:56.72 and the U.S. in 2:57.05.

The last time the U.S. failed to win the 4x400 was in 1980, when the United States boycotted the Moscow Olympics. Team USA had won the last eight gold medals in the iterations of the event it entered, though it was later forced to vacate a medal earned with an ineligible runner in 2000.

Trinidad and Tobago held off Great Britain for bronze, beating out the Brits by .13 seconds.

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Women's 1500m: Turkey Wins First Ever Athletics Gold, American Morgan Uceny Falls

Turkey took gold and silver in the women’s 1500m with Asli Cakir Alptekin winning in a time of 4:10.23. Her countrywoman Gamze Bulut lead for most of the race and finished in the silver position with former world champion Maryam Yusuf Jamal of Bahrain claiming the bronze. Alptekin’s medal marks the first ever Turkish gold medal in athletics.

The race started on a very slow pace and just about everyone was still in contention with less than 500m to go, but it was Alptekin who was able get out in front on the final lap.

No American woman has ever medaled in the 1500m at the Olympics, and Morgan Uceny looked as if she might have had a chance to change that until she was tripped up while making her move at the start of the last lap. Uceny tripped in the 1500m final at the 2011 World Championships as well, where she was considered the favorite. Fellow American Shannon Rowbury finished in sixth place.

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Team USA Sets World Record In 4x100m Relay, Smokes Jamaica For Gold

Jamaica's women's 4x100-meter relay team looked like the favorite entering Friday's final, with 100m gold medalist Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce and two-time bronze medalist Veronica Campbell-Brown running. And the Jamaicans did turn in the third-fastest time in the history in the event. But Team USA's fleet foursome smashed the world record and left the Jamaicans in their dust for gold.

Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight, and Carmelita Jeter combined to run the final in 40.82 seconds, crushing the world record held by East Germany since 1985 by more than half a second, and thumping Jamaica (41.41) by almost six-tenths of a second.

The race, possibly the fastest in history, also featured Ukraine's four-woman team setting a national record at 42.04 seconds for bronze.

Felix's gold is the second of her Olympics. Jeter's gold gives her a medal of each color in London.

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Women's 5000m Final: Ethiopia's Meseret Defar Takes Gold

Meseret Defar of Ethiopa won the gold medal in the women's 5,000-meter race Friday night in the 2012 London Olympics in a race unsurprisingly dominated by East African nations. The top six spots were taken by three Ethiopians and three Kenyans, with Kenya's Vivian Jepkemoi Cheruiyot taking the silver and Ethiopian Tirunesh Dibaba, the gold medalist at the 2008 Olympics, took bronze.

Defar finished in 15:04.25, a full half-second ahead of Cheruiyot, who finished in 15:04.74. Defar was the bronze medalist in Beijing and gold medalist in Athens in 2004, where she was just 20 years old. She's now 28 but is running as fast as ever. Her countrywoman, Dibaba — whose nickname is "Baby-Faced Destroyer" — is 27, so it's not ridiculous to think they'll again share the medal stand in Rio in 2016.

Kenya, interestingly enough, has never won gold in the 5k, despite being dominant in all the races with longer distances, meaning Cheruiyot's finish is the best in her country's history. She should be happy with that.

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U.S. Relay Teams Qualify For Finals In Women's 400, Men's 100

Team USA is hoping to add more track medals in the relay events that will take place on Friday and Saturday. Two teams will run in finals Friday, and two more, the women's 4x400-meter and men's 4x100m squads, qualified for their Saturday finals.

The U.S. women easily won its heat in the 4x400 in 3:22.09, more than a second better than second-place Russia. And that time was the best of any team in qualifying, a great sign for Team USA -- especially considering that Sanya Richards-Ross, the 400 gold medalist, didn't run in the heat.

But the really interesting development was the U.S. qualifying first for the men's 4x100 final, exactly .01 seconds ahead of Jamaica. Jamaica is still the favorite to take gold in the event, and didn't run Usain Bolt in the qualifying heat, but it did put 100m silver medalist Yohan Blake on the track. Although the U.S. didn't run either Tyson Gay or Ryan Bailey, who both ran in the 100 final, the Americans pipped the Jamaicans, who won gold in Beijing.

The Great Britain team, a medal contender, was disqualified for a late baton pass in the first heat.

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Team USA Announces Lineups For Men's And Women's Relay Finals

The finals for the men's 4x400-meter relay and women's 4x100 relay at the 2012 Olympics both take place on Friday, and the speculation about who, exactly, will be selected for the teams from nations' "relay pools" is now over. Team USA announced its lineups for the men's 4x400 final and the qualifying rounds of the women's 4x400 on Friday.

M4x400m Lineups: USA: Nellum, Mance, McQuay, Taylor. GBR: Williams, Green, Greene, Rooney #Olympics

— Joe Battaglia (@JoeBattagliaNBC) August 10, 2012

W4x100 lineups: USA: Madison, Felix, Knight, Jeter. JAM: SAFP, Simpson, VCB, Stewart #Olympics

— Joe Battaglia (@JoeBattagliaNBC) August 10, 2012

The U.S. men have been dominant in the 4x400 for many years, winning every gold medal in the event since 1984, though their gold in 2000 was vacated retroactively. The 2012 foursome of Bryshon Nellum, Joshua Mance, Tony McQuay and Angelo Taylor only has one holdover from 2008 (Taylor), but is still a favorite to claim gold again, after tying the Bahamas for the fastest time in qualifying.

Team USA has been similarly competitive in the women's 4x100 from 1984 to 1996, winning four straight golds, but the Americans haven't topped the podium since Atlanta and haven't medaled since Sydney, where they took bronze. Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight, and Carmelita Jeter give the U.S. a formidable quarter for Friday's final.

The final is also a long-awaited revival of the rivalry between Jamaica and the U.S. on the Olympic stage, and a chance for redemption for both squads, as handoff issues kept both from medaling in Beijing.

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Olympics 2012 Track & Field: TV Coverage, Event Schedule For Friday

Friday at the Olympics will have six gold medal events in track and field. Find the day's schedule here.