Not sure how you make that mistake though, the runner handing the baton off can see the lines directly in front of him, you can't give the baton to the guy in front of you too early, that's just an avoidable mistake
The guy who ran lead for the US did a horrendous job and probably couldn't wait to be finished so I could see why he tried to hand off to Gatlin. Gatlin was basically the only American who ran a strong leg. Brommell did a horrendous job especially. What a bad Olympics for him.
Completely incorrect. The bad exchange is 100% on Gatlin. He started running too late, and as a result, Brommell ran up onto him. Look how slow Gatlin is running when he gets the baton. Brommell can't slow down and wait until they're in the zone, or else Gatlin will have run too far ahead of him by that time. It's completely Gatlin's fault for starting late.
And if it was the US strategy was to plan an early hand-off to give Gatlin a slightly longer leg, that's a very risky thing to do, and it clearly didn't pay off.
I would be interested in say a 1600m relay. With 2 legs of 200m, a leg of 400m, and a leg of 800m.
When I ran in college they had a distance medley relay during Indoor season. I think it's 1200m to 400m to 800m to 1600m. That might not be exact, but it was along those lines. All I know is it always looked weird seeing it go from slow to so fast when people passed the baton from the 1200 to the 400.
And yeah, swimming has the medley for the different strokes -- I'd love to see that for the Olympics just with different distances. It's not a very common thing though.