Bad day for US at Olympic softball, track—and much more

BEIJING – Crystl Bustos rocked slowly from side to side, kicked away some dirt, then started rocking again. As she and her US softball teammates waited to receive their silver medals—yes, silver—the slugger clearly wanted to get this over with. Instead of capping their sport’s fourth and possibly final Olympic appearance with a fourth gold medal, the Americans lost 3-1 to Japan in a game they never led. “You train your whole life and you want to win," Bustos said. “It hurts a lot." What was supposed to be a coronation turned into humiliation. The softball gals weren’t the only Americans feeling that way Thursday, a rainy day that was practically a washout for the US delegation. Start at the track, where the chances for a 16th gold in the men’s 400-meter relay came to an end—not by getting beat, but by dropping the baton on the final exchange. In a first-round heat, of all things. “I take full blame for it," Tyson Gay said of his bad exchange with Darvis Patton. “I kind of feel I let them down." The drop means Gay, the defending world champion in the 100 and 200, will leave Beijing not just empty-handed, but without even running in a final. About a half-hour later, the women made the same mistake, when US women’s relay anchor Lauryn Williams couldn’t get her hand around the baton Torri Edwards was trying to pass. It was eerily reminiscent of the 2004 Athens Games, where Williams’ faulty exchange with Marion Jones cost the US a medal. “If people want to assess the blame to me, that’s OK. I mean, I can take whatever it is that people are going to dish out," Williams said of the latest dropped baton. “We had good chemistry. The hand was back there. She was there. I don’t know what happened." Relay preliminaries are supposed to be gimmes for the United States. Setting aside the boycotted 1980 Moscow Olympics, you have to go back to 1948 for the last time the US women failed to reach the 400 relay final; 1912 and 1988 were the only previous times it happened to the men. This will be the first time the men have gone consecutive Olympics without winning the 400 relay. In water polo, the women came in No. 1, favored to finally win gold after coming close in Athens and Sydney. But the Netherlands jumped ahead 4-0, and the Americans never recovered, losing 9-8. The US also never found a way to stop Danielle de Bruijn. She scored seven goals, including the game-winner with 26 seconds left. “It’s just a little bittersweet," American Natalie Golda said as she wiped away tears. “It’s an amazing thing to have an Olympic medal. But we had the game. Like, we had it in our grasp, and we let it slip away." The problems weren’t limited to team sports. Daniel Cormier, captain of the US wrestling team and a medal contender, withdrew before his first bout because he’d made himself sick while shedding pounds for the weigh-in. Although he reached his target weight, he got so dehydrated that he wound up in a hospital. Decathlete Tom Pappas was favored to win a medal, but he bailed out because of a foot problem during the second event. Injuries also knocked him out of the Olympics in 2004, when he was the reigning world champ, and he’s struggled to stay healthy since. Breaux Greer managed only one throw of the javelin, not because of the shoulder injury that got in his way last month, but because he broke a bone in his right hand two weeks ago. Diver Laura Wilkinson, a gold medalist in 2000, ended the final meet of her career ninth in platform. That leaves the US on the brink of going home without a medal. Americans had never been shut out in diving until Athens. Now, it’ll be twice in a row unless David Boudia or fellow teenager Thomas Finchum can pull off a surprise in the platform. Some results don’t look too bad, until you have the full perspective. Such as Allyson Felix winning silver in the 200 meters. No shame there, but still a letdown for the reigning world champion. In taekwondo, Mark Lopez won silver and his sister Diana got bronze. However, their brother Steven won gold at the last two Olympics, and might get another Friday. He’ll fight Turkey’s Bahri Tanrikulu, whose sister Azize defeated Diana Lopez on Thursday. The Lopezes are the first three siblings to compete for the United States in the same Olympics since the Tritschler brothers, who competed in gymnastics in St. Louis in 1904 but failed to medal. Despite it all, the day wasn’t a total loss. In fact, it began with the women’s beach volleyball squad of Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor winning a second straight gold medal, and it ended with the women’s soccer team winning gold for the third time in four Olympics; it also was the 1,000th gold medal ever won by the United States in all Olympics. More good news: the women’s basketball team advanced to the gold medal game, and there was a 1-2-3 sweep of the men’s 400 meters. Nice, but not enough to overshadow the botches. When the postscript of these games is written, you can be sure the bobbled handoffs and the softball team’s loss will be prominently mentioned. “The reality of it is, Japan was the better team tonight," US softball coach Mike Candrea said. “As athletes, it’s awfully tough to handle the disappointments, but that’s athletics. ... Like I told the girls tonight, there’s going to be other things in life that’s more tragic than tonight. “We will move on." – AP