Silver ladies: Daryl Neita, Amy Hunt, Imani Lansiquot and Dina Asher-Smith, the Great Britain women’s 4x100m relay team, after their second place in the Paris Olympic final
Imani Lansiquot, the former Trinity School sixth-former, landed the biggest prize of her athletics career last night, when in the middle of a Paris storm she stormed down the back straight of the Stade de France and safely handed over the baton, as the Great Britain women’s 4×100 metres relay team raced to Olympic silver medals – the country’s best result in this event since the 1956 Games in Melbourne.
Sutton-based Lansiquot and her south London “neighbour”, Dina Asher-Smith (the former 200m world champion is a lifelong member of Blackheath Harriers and Bromley Ladies), delivered the high-powered opening two legs of the relay, and possibly were just ahead of the rest of the world at halfway.
But two sticky baton changes later in the race allowed the United States to get back on terms, and they just pipped Britain at the line, 41.78sec to 41.85, with Germany in 41.97 winning bronze.
Good Games: Imani Lansiquot has enjoyed her time at the Paris Olympics
Lansiquot, 26, who in her teens also attended Coloma girls’ school, said: “I was really happy with my leg and what we did as a team.” Official Olympic split times showed that Lansiquot had run her leg in 10.13sec.
Britain’s women’s relay teams, including Asher-Smith and anchor leg runner Daryll Neita, had won bronze medals at the 2016 Rio Games and Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
“Twice in a row we had bronze and today we got silver,” Lansiquot said.
“We wanted the gold so we were disappointed, but you can’t be unhappy with an Olympic silver medal. We showed that we’re consistent, that we believe in ourselves and I’m so proud of us.”
Last night’s was Britain’s best result in the Olympic women’s 4x100m relay in 68 years.
“No frustrations at all,” Lewisham-based Neita said when asked about the changeovers.
“It’s a relay and anything can happen and in amongst all the chaos we remained professional, got the job done and got the baton round. We came in in a really strong position and we left with a medal and I think we should be really proud of ourselves.”
Hard work: Joe Choong struggled with parts of his modern pentathlon semi-final yesterday
There’s another, possibly remote, chance of another Olympic medal for Croydon today, when Joe Choong, the 2020 Games gold medal-winner in the modern pentathlon and double world champion, goes in the 2024 final of the five-sport event at Versailles.
The Whitgift old boy had a tough qualification yesterday and looked below par. Choong had faults in the show-jumping and a poor score in the fencing, and he looked weary in the laser run shoot-and-run finale.
But Choong, 29, still did enough to make the top nine in his semi-final. He starts the final level with all 17 of his rivals today.
The men’s modern pentathlon is one of 39 gold medals to be decided today, the penultimate day of the Paris Olympics, and starts with the show jumping rides at 4.30pm today.
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
