Mixed fortunes for British 4x100m runners as the men finish last but the women breeze to victory in their heat on Tuesday morning in Rome
The British men’s sprint relay medal hopes collapsed in the heats on Tuesday (June 11) when the team finished last in 39.60.
CJ Ujah, Jona Efoloko, Richard Kilty and Romell Glave endured a nightmare race as Germany strode to victory in 38.43 ahead of Belgium (38.55) whereas the other heat was won by Netherlands in 38.34 from Italy (38.40).
“It was horrendous, I don’t know what happened,” said Kilty after a particularly bad exchange between himself and Glave. “We should never been running that slow.
“We are going to need to take a look back at it on the video, but that team on paper is a very very fast team, but something clearly went wrong. It is very disappointing as we wanted to come here and win. We are capable of winning.
Richard Kilty passes the baton to Romell Glave (Getty)
“It is a new team. We have never run that particular order before, we are trying things out for the Olympics, so we have to test people out on different legs before it, which makes sense. But, we are just really disappointed with that, it is all just very much a blur.
“The changeovers weren’t as great from the feeling of them. We’ll look over them and look at the data. There will be something analysed all over the track which we could have done better.”
He added: “We are a team, we are a unit. We win together, we lose together. We go back from this and learn from it.”
Asha Philip, Amy Hunt, Dina Asher-Smith and Desiree Henry combined to win their heat in 42.25 – with France (42.35), Netherlands (42.39), Germany (42.47) and Switzerland (42.76) next fastest.
It was particularly pleasing for Henry, who was making a return to the GB team after several years.
“Honestly, this has been a journey,” she said. “I’m thinking that the last time I did the Europeans was 2016, and that was horrible because the 100m was horrible and I didn’t get to run the relay, so with this today, I’m back now I’m healthy and this is an exciting time.
“This has been years in the making. It is an honour to run with these girls. This is the level of British sprinting and I am honoured to be one of them again.”
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