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wire servicesRare middle-distance sweeps are in the spotlight. But Americans get a key relay disappointment.
ATHENS - The track and field competition ended with a night of exciting achievements, but not many of them by the United States.
Britain's Kelly Holmes and Morocco's Hicham El Guerrouj completed rare middle-distance sweeps. Britian beat the United States by one-hundredth of a second for gold in the 4x100-meter relay. Norway's Andreas Thorkildsen, 22, won the javelin with a personal-best throw of 283 feet, 9 inches, while the Czech Republic's Jan Zelezny, who was seeking an unprecedented fifth consecutive medal at age 38 and a fourth straight gold, was ninth.
Russia's Yuriy Borzakovskiy rallied from fourth on the final straightaway to win the men's 800, and Russia's Yelena Slesarenko set an Olympic record of 6 feet, 9 inches to win the women's high jump.
Americans claimed easy gold in two relays, the men's and women's 4x400, but the men's failure in the 4x100, because of a sloppy baton handoff, was a huge disappointment. The United States lost the relay for only the fifth time.
Holmes won the 1,500 to add to the 800 gold she won Monday, and El Guerrouj became the first man in 80 years to win the 1,500 and 5,000 at one Olympics.
Holmes is the third woman to achieve the middle-distance double, after Russians Tatyana Kazankina in Montreal in 1976 and Svetlana Masterkova in Atlanta in 1996.
"The 800 was a total shock, and today has blown me away," Holmes said. "I feel like I'm going to wake up tomorrow and have to run the whole damn thing over again."
El Guerrouj outsprinted world record holder Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopa down the final straightaway. "I think that this is a historic victory that I dedicate to the Moroccan people, to the Arab world and to the Muslim world," he said.
The other man to win the 1,500 and 5,000 in an Olympics was Paavo Nurmi, the "Flying Finn," in 1924.
The United States finished with 24 medals, tops among all nations and its most since 30 in 1992. The men had 18, also the best showing since '92. The six women's medals were the fewest since three in 1976.