Of all the near misses that Britain’s women’s sprint team have endured at these Paris Olympics, this one will also hurt the most. A frustrating final changeover in the 4x100 metre relay cost Britain gold by eight hundreds of a second as the quartet of Dina Asher-Smith, Imani Lanisquot, Amy Hunt and Daryll Neita had to settle for silver. In drizzly conditions inside the Stade de France, Britain had looked on the money after Asher-Smith burst out of the blocks and completed an immaculate changeover with Lansiquot, who ran the quickest split of the field in 10.
13 seconds and installed Britain as serious gold-medal contenders. But after that, their race plan unravelled by the tiniest of margins. Clean changeovers are the holy grail in this team event but a prolonged final change of the baton between bend runner Amy Hunt and Daryll Neita ate into valuable milliseconds, as Britain clocked 41.
85secs, with Germany third in 41.97. It was an exchange that, even in real time, seemed to take an eternity, and one that was all the more unfortunate given that the duo are training partners in Italy and aren’t short of practice time as a team.
Still, their spirits would not be dampened, and rightly so. This was still a significant upgrade from the bronze that this team has claimed in each of the last two Olympics and was a sweet reward for Asher-Smith and Neita in particular, who had both missed out on individual titles by mere hundredths of a second earlier in the week. “We are all s.