Yahoo Finance Olympic Icon Carl Lewis Tears Into U.S. Men’s Relay Team: 'Total Embarrassment'
Olympic legend Carl Lewis slammed the U.S. men’s 4x100-meter relay team as a “clown show” Thursday after the Americans failed to qualify for the final at the Tokyo Olympics.
The athletes ― Fred Kerley, Ronnie Baker, Trayvon Bromell and Cravon Gillespie — finished their heat sixth after morebungled baton exchanges.
Lewis unloaded on Twitter.
“The USA team did everything wrong in the men’s relay,” wrote the nine-time Olympic champion, now assistant track coach at the University of Houston.
Lewis, 60, slammed the team’s baton-passing system and said the athletes ran in the wrong order. There was “no leadership,” he lamented.
“It was a total embarrassment, and completely unacceptable for a USA team to look worse than the AAU kids I saw,” Lewis concluded.
The USA team did everything wrong in the men's relay. The passing system is wrong, athletes running the wrong legs, and it was clear that there was no leadership. It was a total embarrassment, and completely unacceptable for a USA team to look worse than the AAU kids I saw .
— Carl Lewis (@Carl_Lewis) August 5, 2021
Lewis echoed his fierce criticism in an interview with USA Today, calling the performance a “clown show.”
“This was a football coach taking a team to the Super Bowl and losing 99-0 because they were completely ill-prepared,” he told the outlet.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
