U.S. women’s relay team flubs final handoff, fails to reach medal finals

The screams of excitement that would have been coming from Alice Williams’ Vicksburg home Friday morning were dashed today when the women’s 4-by-100 relay team failed to qualify for the gold medal finals.

Williams granddaughter, Angela Williams, ran the lead leg in the 4-by-100 relay this morning, but a flub on the final handoff led to an eighth-place finish. Only the top four teams advanced to Friday’s final.

Angela’s dad and coach, Johnny Williams, of Ontario, Calif., opted out of a trip to Beijing in order to take his semi-annual visit home to Vicksburg to see family.

“I come here twice a year, to see my mom, But this time, we’ll get to watch Angie run in the relays. It’s going to be exciting,” he said on Wednesday.

Unfortunately, it is the same result as the 2004 Olympic Games in Greece. In Athens, Williams, the current indoor world champion in the 60-meter dash, had run a strong first leg to give the Americans the lead after the first exchange. Then the unthinkable happened. Marion Jones, then the most dominant woman sprinter in the world, had a bad exchange with Lauryn Williams.

“They had come in with the fastest time in the world and Angela had gotten them off to a fast start,” Johnny Williams said. “Angela handed off to Marion and then on the next exchange with Lauryn, they botched it. Lauryn was out of the zone. She had just come off running in the 200-meter final.”

The USA was disqualified. Jamaica won the gold followed by Russia and France

“Angie told me later, ‘I was so shocked, I couldn’t even cry,'” Johnny Williams said.

The next three years proved difficult for Angela Williams. She tore her hamstring and then had stress fractures in both shins.

After rehabbing her injuries, Angela got back in training in 2007 and began following her dad’s regimen.

“I’ve been training Angie since she was 6 years old. Through the parks and recs in Ontario and then I coached her again when I was at Chino High School,” said Johnny, a 1968 graduate of Rosa A. Temple High School of Vicksburg.

When Angela began running in high school, Johnny Williams was then the sprint coach at Chino. There Angela developed into one of the world’s best junior runners. She went to Southern Cal where, from 1999-2003, she won four straight NCAA championships in the women’s 100 meters.

“A lot of girls go straight pro after high school in track, but Angela went to USC and had a great career there. Not only did she win the four NCAA titles, but she was named to the USC Hall of Fame,” Johnny said.

In 2002 she turned pro. In 2003, she won a silver medal at the Indoor World Championships in the 60 meters.

In 2004 at the Olympic Trials, she finished sixth in the 100 meters. But that was good enough to be included onto the U.S. National team’s relay pool, giving her a ticket to the 2004 Athens Games.

The gold medal, however, went up in smoke after the botched exchange.

“You can’t win without that stick,” Angela told her dad after the race.

When the calender turned to 2008, Angela was ready to reemerge on the world stage.

“I was able to get her back in shape. We ran, we cycled, she swam,” Johnny said.

In January she won the U.S. title at 60 meters, which earned her a trip to the World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain.

“She ran a 7.09 in the final to win the world 60-meter championship,” Johnny Williams said. “She came all the way back.”

The world title at Valencia was Angela’s first gold medal.

The women’s relay team was not the only one to stumble this morning.

Men’s anchor Tyson Gay, part of the American team that won the relay at last year’s world championships, did not get the baton from third-leg runner Darvis Patton leading to a last-place finish for the men and keeping them from chasing a gold medal.

“I take full blame for it,” Gay said. “I kind of feel I let them down.”

And yet another gold medal opportunity slipped away for the American team.

Moments before the relay, American Allyson Felix finished second behind Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell-Brown in the women’s 200, adding her name to a long list of U.S. favorites who have failed.

Felix (200), Gay (100, 200), Bernard Lagat (1,500), Brad Walker (pole vault) and Reese Hoffa (shot put) are American world champions who failed to win gold in their events this year. Lolo Jones and Sanya Richards were other American favorites who came up short.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.