I watched some of the relays and today I listed as Ato Boldon praised the Jamaican women on their handoffs. Well, I was not impressed. The women did ok, but if you look at a replay with the exception of the final handoff, each incoming runner had to slow down to give off the stick. It certainly was not a professional exchange. In fact, many women's college teams do a better job, they just don't have the legs to as fast.
As for the US men's 4x400 I was amazed at the sloppy handoffs by the first three legs as the baton was given off LEFT HAND TO LEFT HAND, with the outgoing athlete not bothering to swtich hands. It wasn't until the final leg that a left hand to left hand exchange was made and then the baton was switched to the right (correct) hand. Are you kidding me...maybe some uncoached high school team would do handoffs like this, but on the professional circuit?
Boldon mentioned how he had talked to one of the USATF people about fixing the issues concerning relays, but the process would take some time. How long does it take to teach an athlete how to take a relay handoff?
Sorry, but whoever is the sprint coach either has no power to work with these teams or the process of getting a team together is like putting together a playground basketball team, you pick 4 individuals and they do one or two handoffs prior to the race and off they go.
The US guys 4x100 is another example of just putting together a pickup team. It is the responsibility of both athletes, the outgoing athlete doesn't put his hand back to accept the baton until he is inside the actual handoff zone and the incoming runner doesn't yell "stick" until the outgoing runner has gotten completely through the fly zone. What would possess these guys to rush the handoff when there are still 20 meters left in the zone for the handoff to take place? The call was correct, the baton was touched prior to moving from the fly zone into the legal handoff zone.
I didn't take a long enough view of the women's handoff issue, but that looked like a timing problem as the outgoing runner (Muna Lee) just did not get moving quickly enough and also seemed to "squeeze" the lane so that the incoming runner didn't have enough room to stay in the lane.
Just my two cents on this issue.