Lauren Williams: never, ever put her on a 4 x 100 relay again!

she hasn't a clue on how to take a blind baton pass. high school kids do better than that.

I was horrified when I saw her curl her hand up before the baton even got passed to her. Dam, that is junior high school stuff. But it just shows you all how our system is screwed up. Until our federation mandates the relay team members actually practice all summer leading up to the games we will get this stuff.

That little pig needs to go away. She is so annoying.

i agree she blew it bad!

In her defense, all of the handoffs were pretty terrible, even the ones that worked. The US wasn't ready for the race, clearly.

The solution to this lies in coaching decisions.

Idiot.

The coaches don't make the handoffs. These are adults and have been doing this how many years now? They know what they need to do. They are lazy in practice and it shows.

Yeah, I dont think this should be a three strikes law...

OK, good point. I guess relay coaches have no role in relay performance, because the runners are adults.

You moron.

Maybe we should have no coaches at all, then?

Obviously when a team brings together members who don't train together year-round, who train and compete almost exclusively in individual efforts, and pass batons only a handful of times per year, there is a great deal of work to be done to get it right. This is what coaches are PAID to do. If their practices were "lazy" (how would you know this, exactly?), where was the coaching? If they weren't ready to take the track, where was the coaching? There was just a TV feature on the Canadian men (all four 10.1+, and beat the U.S. in placing), who practice every detail of this to death, with the coaching of a previous 4x100 Olympic gold medalist. Get it together in this way, or expect more embarrassing results for the U.S.

Anyone who has run this relay at a high level knows not to dump all over the athlete in a case like this. It's unfortunate, and the only thing to avoid it was better (coached) practice.

I have no call to criticize her since I always sucked at handoffs myself. I once stood completely still and allowed my teammate to smash into me during the handoff. Brilliant.

C'mon, give her a break. How would you do against the voodoo?

Stick Me Baby wrote:

C'mon, give her a break. How would you do against the voodoo?

I couldn't believe she said that. Ahhh she is the worst!

Moldy Cheese wrote:

I have no call to criticize her since I always sucked at handoffs myself. I once stood completely still and allowed my teammate to smash into me during the handoff. Brilliant.

Were you running for an OLYMPIC GOLD?

I bet even you and I could exchange better and I use a freekin cane!

Sorry I guess I am just used to the HIGH SCHOOL kids on my team that can figure these things out on their own. I can leave them to practice it on their own and work out the details of the hand offs. It's really not that tough. I agree that the coaches should be helping them but to place the blame completely on the coaches is stupid. I would say it's probably 90% athletes and 10% coaches (on relays).

The commentators on Eurosport were saying that Poland does tons of drills in handing over the baton and it shows when they invariable finish above teams that looked better on paper. When Britain dropped it, they got mad at the coaches not the athletes.

stupid letsrunners wrote:

Anyone who has run this relay at a high level knows not to dump all over the athlete in a case like this. It's unfortunate, and the only thing to avoid it was better (coached) practice.

I mean she went to Miami for goodness sakes. If she had gone to a good school like Florida State, Florida or someplace like that she would have been taught proper relay technique.

Don't make fun until you've been hexed.

I agree and have a question? Why don't we have relay specialist for the 4x1 or at least have people running on the 4x1 that have relay experience like Lolo Jones. She ran on LSU's relay and they were damn good.