TOKYO — Sha’Carri Richardson saved the day in her relay.
Noah Lyles and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone put exclamation points on theirs.
The best in the U.S. splashed through the rainy relays Sunday in Tokyo to capture three gold medals and close out world championships on a night when track also bid a hug-filled farewell to Jamaica’s sprint legend, Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce.
“I felt like I ran with my heart because of the ladies I’m standing with,” Richardson said, as she celebrated her first gold medal of a championships that was far from perfect. “I feel really good. It came back. I’m ready to start all over again.”
It has been a tough, injury-tainted year for Richardson, who finished fifth last weekend in the women’s 100. Even so, the U.S. put her on the anchor leg for the 4×100 relay — same place she has been for gold medal performances the last two years — and she didn’t disappoint.
But unlike last year at the Olympics, when she gave the side-eye to the opponents she passed, then stomped her foot for emphasis at the finish line, she had to run hard all the way through in this one.
Richardson was actually trailing by 0.01 when she received the baton from Kayla White. It took a few steps for her to build a lead of her own, and she held off Jonielle Smith down the stretch and leaned in for the win in 41.75 seconds.
It was a 0.04-second margin, and the difference might have been a slight hiccup in an exchange between Jamaican twins Tia and Tina Clayton. The U.S. had none of those problems.
A full-circle moment for Jefferson-Wooden, Fraser-Pryce
In a couple of near-perfect, full-circle moments, it was Richardson’s comeback that turned Melissa Jefferson-Wooden, who ran the lead leg, into the first three-time sprint winner at worlds — 100, 200 and relay — since Fraser-Pryce did it in 2013.
It also left the Jamaican they call the “Mommy Rocket” with silver, the same color she won in her debut at worlds, back in 2007 in Osaka when she was 17 and earned a spot on the foursome that ran the qualifying round.
“No emotions right now,” Fraser-Pryce said. “Just grateful to be able to finish this race. It’s been such a remarkable moment.”
Jefferson-Wooden wasn’t alone in seeking out Fraser-Pryce, whose medal was her 17th from world championships to go with eight from the Olympics, mostly to say “thanks.”
“She’s definitely paved the way for women’s short sprints and it’s so inspiring to see someone like her do what she did and be so dominant for so long,” Jefferson-Wooden said. “All of us up here are aspiring to do the same things.”
Not lost in the celebration was that all four racers on that women’s team — Tee Tee Terry ran the second leg — train together and that Richardson and Jefferson-Wooden figure to be vying to take Fraser-Pryce’s place atop the sprint game in the lead-in to the LA Olympics.
Lyles headlines a (rare) no-drama win in the men’s 4×100
A few minutes after that relay, and with the rain still falling, Lyles crossed the line first to give the U.S. its 26th medal and 16th gold of the meet — totals that are more respectable after what, earlier in the week, had the makings of a bad meet.
The 26 overall medals are the same number they captured in the same stadium four years ago at the Tokyo Olympics. Only seven were gold that time.
Lyles accounted for two golds and a bronze, and the finale was, frankly, boring — something hardly anybody says about the U.S. men in a 4×100. Bad exchanges have cost them in seven worlds and six Olympics since 1995.
But this is now a worlds-winning streak for the Americans, who won two years ago in Budapest (but did mess up at the Olympics last year) and didn’t have to deal with Jamaican 100 gold and silver medalists Oblique Seville and Kishane Thompson because of that team’s troubles in qualifying.
“I didn’t have to do much. These guys took care of business,” Lyles said. “They made sure the handoffs were clean. It’s a little anticlimatic, but at the same time, it’s a great feeling because you know that the job has been done.”
McLaughlin-Levrone gets asked about another world record
McLaughlin-Levrone also kept it light on drama. She inhereted a huge lead in the 4×400 from Aaliyah Butler and opened it wider from there. The Americans finished in a championships-record 3 minutes, 16.61 seconds for a 2.64-second win over Jamaica.
Much like Thursday night, when McLaughlin-Levrone ran 47.78 in the 400 flat to become the first woman to crack 48 seconds in nearly 40 years, she was being asked about world records again. The mark in the women’s relay is also ancient — 3:15.17 by the Soviet Union in 1988.
“We’re getting closer and closer,” she said. “It’s going to come eventually and it’s just about the right situation, but tonight we’re happy to walk away with a gold medal.”
A silver goes to 4×400 men
The only miss for the U.S. involved the men’s 4×400 team.
It came down to a last-lap sprint between 400-hurdles champ Rai Benjamin of America and 400-flat champ Collen Kebinatshipi of Botswana.
Benjamin received the baton with a 0.19-second lead but couldn’t hold off Kebinatshipi, who beat him to the line by 0.07 to give emerging sprint power Botswana its first relay win in 2:57.76.
