Romell Glaive and Richard Kielty failed as final changes for Team GB. Photo: Shutterstock
Great Britain crashed out of the men's 4x100m race. relay at the European Championships after a “horrible” performance when they finished last in the semi-final heat.
It was CJ Ujah's first major championship relay since his positive drug test cost them Olympic silver in 2021. A misjudgment of the final switch from Richard Kielty to Romell Glave ended their hopes of a fifth straight European gold.
Glave, who won bronze in the 100m individual medley, appeared to start too early and then struggled. to make the necessary changes, but Kilty could not understand how they were already so far adrift.
“It was terrible, I don’t know what happened,” Kielty said. “We should never have run that slow. We’ll have to look at it again on video, but on paper this team is a very, very fast team. Something clearly went wrong. It’s very disappointing because we wanted to come here and win.”
“We’ve never run in that order before, we’re trying things out for the Olympics so we have to test people at different stages before that. We’re just very disappointed about it.”
Richard Kielty (right) called Team GB's relay “terrifying”; Photo: Getty Images/Michael Steele
With Louis Hinchliffe, Jeremiah Azou, Rhys Prescod and Zharnelle Hughes missing in Rome (even though they were the fastest British sprinters this year), the team is likely to be a very different team in Paris. This error follows a history of failures in this event.
The men's team passed the baton at the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games, as well as the 2001 World Championships and the European Championships in Helsinki. They were also disqualified from the 2008 and 2021 Olympics, but in addition to repeated success at the European Championships, they won world gold in 2017 and Olympic gold in 2004. “We are a team, we are one, we win together, we lose together,” Keelty said.
Uja, whose positive test after Tokyo was inadvertently caused by a contaminated amino acid bought on Amazon, said he was all still cheered by teammates. . Kilty had earlier said that he would never forgive Uja. “We all make mistakes in life, and obviously I made it at this level,” Ujah said. “I know I can walk with my head held high knowing I wasn’t trying to cheat.
“I learned a lot about myself, resilience and mental health. It took a lot of effort to get back to this point. My little son pushes me and that's what keeps me going.
“It was hard. I can't put it into words, but you know, I always hoped that I would be acquitted, and I would never intentionally do what happened.”
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