Who needs Carl Lewis?
Not the U.S. 400-meter relay team at the World Track and Field Championships.With Lewis sitting on the sidelines, watching anxiously, the American team of Andre Cason, Leroy Burrell, Dennis Mitchell and Mike Marsh was timed in a sizzling 37.75 seconds - the second-fastest in history - during a semifinal heat Saturday.
The only faster clocking was the world-record 37.67 by the team of Marsh, Burrell, Mitchell and Lewis at Zurich, Switzerland, on Aug. 15.
Lewis, who anchored the seven-fastest U.S. relay teams ever until the championships, will be back in his familiar spot in Sunday's final. The chance of another world record is staggering.
"The record will definitely fall, if we can get the stick around," Mitchell said. "Me, Leroy and Carl are at the peaks of our careers, and Andre's been running fast all year."
There's no question about the speed of the American team. Lewis set a world record of 9.86 seconds in winning the 100-meter dash last Sunday night, and was followed by Burrell in 9.88 and Mitchell in 9.91. Cason's best time this year is 10.05.
"We know our leg speed is better than anyone's in the world," Cason said.
But he said the semifinal time was meaningless.
"I want something to show for it - a gold medal," Cason said. "A record would be nice, too."
"We were thinking we could break the world record in the semifinals," Burrell said. "We came close."
As Mitchell emphasized, the important part is clean baton passes, a problem that has plagued U.S. teams in recent championship meets.
In the 1988 Olympics, the heavily favored U.S. team was disqualified in the first round when anchorman Lee McNeill took the baton from Calvin Smith out of the passing zone. And in the recent Pan American Games, another heavily favored U.S. team failed to win a medal when anchorman Jeff Williams dropped the baton on a handoff from Michael Bates.
One of the teams joining the Americans in the final was Canada, with Ben Johnson running the unfamiliar third leg.
After helping Canada set a national record of 38.76 in the semifinals Saturday, the contrite Johnson, who in the past had been Canada's leadoff runner, said, "It's nice to compete here."
Stick-passing - or lack of it - killed the U.S. women's 400-meter relay team in Saturday's semifinals.
Leadoff runner Carlette Guidry and No. 2 runner Esther Jones failed to make connections on their handoff, and the baton dropped sadly to the track before the team trudged sadly off the track.
"I put it in her hand . . ." Guidry said.
"Carlette said she thought she had the stick in Esther's hand, but Esther never got it," said anchor runner Evelyn Ashford, one of the two women's team captains. "Now I know how the men felt in 1988."
In trying to comfort Guidry and Jones, Ashford told them, "It's not the first time it happened, and it won't be the last."
As the U.S. team was being eliminated, the German foursome of Grit Breuer, 100 and 200-meter gold medalist Katrin Krabbe, Sabine Richter and Heike Drechsler won its heat in 41.91, the fastest in the world in 1991.
While the U.S. 400 relay teams were meeting with mixed success, the 1,600-meter relay teams both breezed through their semifinals and into Sunday's finals.
The men's quartet of Jeff Reynolds, Quincy Watts, Mark Everett and Danny Everett won in 2:59.55, and the women's team of Rochelle Stevens, Diane Dixon, Natasha Kaiser and Lillie Leatherwood won in 3:24.92.
Otherwise, it was a dismal day for the U.S. team as it failed to win a medal in six events, and fell into second place in the medals race, 26 to 20, behind the Soviet Union.
In men's finals, Werner Gunthor of Switzerland won his second straight men's title in the shot put, throwing 71 feet, 11/4 inches; Moses Kiptanui led a 1-2 Kenyan finish in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, clocking 8:12.59, and Soviet teammates Aleksander Potashov and Andrey Perlov crossed the finish line together in the 50-kilometer walk in 3:53:09, with Potashov being declared the gold medalist.
In women's finals, Heike Henkel of Germany set a national record of 6-83/4, the best in the world this year, in winning the high jump; Hassiba Boulmerka became Algeria's first gold medalist in a major championship, taking the 1,500-meter title in 4:02.21, and Tsvetanka Kristova of Bulgaria won the discus at 233-0, the best in the world for 1991.