"the Jamaican team aside, men’s 4x100 metres relay teams are little quicker than those that competed in the 1960s and 1970s. [..] the French and Trinidadians would have needed a photo finish to separate them from the American team of 1972, who won gold in Munich with a time of 38.19 seconds. [..] The individual 100m champion that year was Soviet sprinter Valeriy Borzov, who completed the distance in 10.14 seconds—a time that would barely have secured qualification from the first round in London [..] By 1984, the average male Olympic finalist was running 5% more quickly than his predecessors in the 1952 Helsinki games—the first to feature reliable electronic timing—in both the 100 metres and 4x100 metres. But thereafter, the individual sprinters continued to speed up, while the relay teams struggled to increase the pace. In London the men’s 100 metres finalists were 9.3% quicker than those in Helsinki 60 years before. The 4x100 metres finalists, by comparison, were only 6.8% better. Strangely enough, this lag between individual and collective speed doesn’t seem to have affected the women. They too have become substantially faster in the last six decades, improving by 10% in the 100 metres. But they have achieved similar gains in the team event, with the finalists in London’s 4x100 metres competition finishing 9.4% more quickly than those in Helsinki. [..] The French introduced a rigorous training schedule that earned them the men’s world record in 1990; the Belgian women’s team won gold in 2008 with similar dedication, while Mr Vazel says that the Swiss and the Dutch have also punched above their weight, and have excluded talented individual sprinters from team events if they do not attend enough training sessions. [..] Between 1992 and 2012, 14.5% of women’s teams that began an Olympic 4x100 metres race were disqualified (25 out of 173); for the men, the figure was 13.3% (30 out of 225). If anything, this suggests that the men might be more cautious when approaching the handoff—or at the very least, slowing down to give themselves a better chance of executing it successfully. [..] The less pacey sprinters of the 1950s and 1960s botched about 5% of their relays [..] Modern runners finish their legs at higher speeds, hence their higher rate of failure. For the men, easing off slightly as they approach the handoff is clearly worth the reduced risk of a fumble. [..] the need for faster male sprinters to apply the brakes does give an advantage to their slower competitors, who might not have to. Perhaps the most impressive 4x100 metres display of all time was by the Cuban men’s quartet that won bronze in 1992. Only one of them had ever run the 100 metres in less than 10.3 seconds—and a paltry 10.21 at that. Yet collectively they circled Barcelona’s track in 38 seconds flat: an average split of 9.50 per leg, and quick enough to win silver in London or Beijing, and gold in Athens."
