A painful year behind them and the finish line in front of them, Sanya Richards of the United States and Christine Ohuruogu of Britain pushed forward Tuesday night with the Olympic gold medal in the 400 meters in the balance.
The 400 is a brutal race: a one-lap, two-pronged test of speed and resilience, and though Richards had demonstrated plenty of both to arrive at this final as the favorite, she once again could not translate her success on the Grand Prix circuit into success at a major championship.
“I got to the 320 mark and my right hamstring kind of grabbed on me, and I just thought, ‘This is unreal, this is worse than my worst nightmare,’ ” Richards said. “I tried to hold them off.”
She could not, and Ohuruogu took the gold in 49.62 seconds, the slowest winning time in an Olympic 400 since 1972. Richards slumped to third in 49.93, more than a second off her personal best, with Shericka Williams surging past her to give Jamaica its latest track medal in a time of 49.69.
She rejected any suggestion that this victory might be tainted. “Why should it be spoiled, unless people try to spoil it?” she said. “I’m very happy about what I’ve done. I’ve got three golds from three major championships. As far as I’m concerned, nothing can spoil that for me.”
Ohuruogu returned from her suspension less than a month before last year’s world championships in Osaka, Japan, and ended up winning a race that Richards missed after failing to qualify for the American team in the 400.
But there have been other successful appeals, including one from the British triathlete Tim Don, who took part in the men’s triathlon on Tuesday.
Ohuruogu was reinstated last November, in part because, unlike Chambers, she had never tested positive or admitted to using banned substances.
Ohuruogu maintained that her missed tests were due to forgetfulness and an overstuffed schedule that caused her to sometimes fail to inform British doping officials when she was changing training sites.
Ohuruogu’s gold medal was the 16th for Britain here, the nation’s best performance at an Olympics in 100 years, and she is familiar with the area where the next Olympic track and field meet will be staged in London in 2012. She grew up in Stratford.
“Its something I’ve given thought to, but it’s a long way away,” she said of the next Summer Games.
Four years must seem longer still to Richards. “I feel more than snake-bitten,” she said shortly before tears started streaming down her face as she was interviewed. “I don’t want to tell you what I’m thinking right now, because it’s not positive. I feel so betrayed by my body once again.”
But gold medals remain painfully elusive. Richards was philosophical after finishing second in the 400 at the world championships in 2005 and philosophical again after developing a rare immune system disorder, Beh?et’s syndrome, and failing to qualify for last year’s world championships in the 400.
Though she did make the team in the 200 and the 4x400 relay, the disease left her weak and caused mouth ulcers. But Richards, with new medication, has had a strong season and said she never saw Tuesday’s breakdown coming.
“I felt so good; I was already getting a bit elated coming off the turn, because I know how my races usually go,” she said. “I have a really strong faith, and I know everything happens for a reason. I just don’t know what this one is for. I don’t know what lesson I have left to learn.”
The 23-year-old Richards did get her first individual Olympic medal. But as she and Ohuruogu held up their prizes on the podium for photographers after “God Save the Queen” had been played, Ohuruogu was beaming and Richards most definitely was not.
“I knew that gold was mine,” she said. “I thought I was going to run 48 seconds.”
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