Summer Olympics 1976 / Athletics - 4 × 400 m (men)

sport	athletics
discipline	4 x 400 meter relay
gender	Men
Attendees	64 athletes from 16 countries
Competition location	Montreal Olympic Stadium
Competition phase	July 30, 1976 (preliminary round) July 31, 1976 (final)
Medalist  United States  POLE  FRG

The men's 4 x 400 meter relay at the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal was held on July 30 and 31, 1976 in the Montreal Olympic Stadium. 64 athletes took part in 16 relays.

The USA relay team ( Herman Frazier , Benny Brown , Fred Newhouse , Maxie Parks ) became Olympic champions . The silver medal went to Poland with Ryszard Podlas , Jan Werner , Zbigniew Jaremski and Jerzy Pietrzyk , the bronze medal to the relay of the Federal Republic of Germany with Franz-Peter Hofmeister , Lothar Krieg , Harald Schmid and Bernd Herrmann .

Relays from the GDR, Switzerland, Austria and Liechtenstein did not take part.

Existing records

World record	2: 56.16 min	USA ( Vince Matthews , Ron Freeman , Larry James , Lee Evans )	Mexico City , Mexico	20th October 1968
Olympic record			Mexico City Final , Mexico

Conducting the competition

The relays completed two preliminary runs on July 30th, in which the three best and the following two fastest teams qualified for the final on July 31st.

Time schedule

July 30th, 5:00 p.m .: Preliminary
July 31, 7:20 p.m .: Final

Note: All times are local Montreal time ( UTC − 5 )

The directly qualified relays are highlighted in light blue, the others in light green.

Preliminary round

Date: July 30, 1976, from 5 p.m.

Forward 1

space	Season	occupation	time	annotation
1	United States	Herman Frazier Benny Brown Fred Newhouse Maxie Parks	2: 59.52 min
2	BR Germany	Franz-Peter Hofmeister Lothar Krieg Harald Schmid Bernd Herrmann	3: 03.24 min
3	Jamaica	Leighton Priestley Donald Quarrie Colin Bradford Seymour Newman	3: 03.86 min
4th	Canada	Ian Seale Don Domansky Leighton Hope Brian Saunders	3: 03.89 min
5	Finland	Ossi Karttunen Stig Lönnqvist Markku Kukkoaho Hannu Mäkelä	3: 05.02 min
6th	Puerto Rico	Pedro Ferrer Iván Mangual Julio Ferrer Jorge Ortiz	3: 06.08 min
7th	Saudi Arabia	Kamil Al-Abassi Hamed Ali Ahmed Al-Assiri Hassan Masallam	3: 17.53 min
DNF	Great Britain	Ainsley Bennett Glen Cohen David Jenkins Alan Pascoe

The British team did not finish the race. Final runner Alan Pascoe was accidentally knocked out of the baton by the Jamaican runner Seymour Newman during the last change.

Forward 2

space	Season	occupation	time	annotation
1	Poland	Ryszard Podlas Jan Werner Zbigniew Jaremski Jerzy Pietrzyk	3: 03.03 min
2	Trinidad and Tobago	Mike Solomon Charles Joseph Horace Tuitt Joseph Coombs	3: 03.54 min
3	Cuba	Eddy Gutiérrez Dámaso Alfonso Carlos Álvarez Alberto Juantorena	3: 05.19 min
4th	France	Hugues Roger Roger Velasquez Francis Kerbiriou Hector Llatser	3: 05.48 min
5	Australia	Max Binnington Peter Grant Don Hanly Rick Mitchell	3: 05.75 min
6th	Soviet Union	Dmitri Stukalov Vladimir Ponomarev Viktor Anochin Yevgeny Gavrilenko	3: 07.72 min
7th	Barbados	Victor Gooding Harcourt Wason Hamil Grimes Orlando Greene	3: 08.13 min
8th	Antigua and Barbuda	Cuthbert Jacobs Paul Richards Elroy Turner Fred Sowerby	3: 09.66 min

final

space	Season	occupation	time	annotation
1	United States	Herman Frazier Benny Brown Fred Newhouse Maxie Parks	2: 58.65 min
2	Poland	Ryszard Podlas Jan Werner Zbigniew Jaremski Jerzy Pietrzyk	3: 01.43 min
3	BR Germany	Franz-Peter Hofmeister Lothar Krieg Harald Schmid Bernd Herrmann	3: 01.98 min
4th	Canada	Ian Seale Don Domansky Leighton Hope Brian Saunders	3: 02.64 min
5	Jamaica	Leighton Priestley Donald Quarrie Colin Bradford Seymour Newman	3: 02.84 min
6th	Trinidad and Tobago	Mike Solomon Horace Tuitt Joseph Coombs Charles Joseph	3: 03.46 min
7th	Cuba	Eddy Gutiérrez Dámaso Alfonso Carlos Álvarez Alberto Juantorena	3: 03.81 min
8th	Finland	Hannu Mäkelä Ossi Karttunen Stig Lönnqvist Markku Kukkoaho	3: 06.51 min

Date: July 31, 1976, 7:20 p.m.

Before the start of the Games, the teams from Great Britain and the 1972 Olympic champion , Kenya , were highly traded in addition to the US relay . Kenya, however, had joined the boycott of African countries and did not participate in Montreal. The British team, however, had missed the qualification for the final. Poland and the Federal Republic of Germany might remain as medal contenders for silver and bronze, although the individual runners of these two nations did not do particularly well here.

In the finale, the US season fully demonstrated its superiority. None of the other seasons were able to come close to keeping up. It was only exciting behind the fight for the other medals. Here the relay from Poland with final runner Jan Werner prevailed and won silver almost three seconds behind the superior US team. Bernd Herrmann secured the bronze medal for Germany, half a second behind Poland, ahead of Canada and Jamaica.

The level in the previous two games was higher. In Mexico City , two seasons had undercut the 3-minute mark and another two teams had remained below 3:01 minutes. In Munich , where the US team was missing, four seasons ran under 3:01 minutes, one of which was under 3 minutes. Here in Montreal the USA could clearly undercut the 3-minute mark, but all other teams were slower than 3:01 minutes.

The Polish relay team managed to win their country's first medal in this discipline.

literature

• Ernst Huberty / Willy B. Wange, The Olympic Games Montreal Innsbruck 1976, Lingen-Verlag, Cologne 1976, p. 237

Video

• ATLETICA 1976 RICOSTRUZIONE STAFFETTA 4X400 MONTREAL 1976 , published January 6, 2016 on youtube.com, accessed December 15, 2017

Web links

• SportsReference 4 × 400 m , accessed December 15, 2017
• Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 66f, English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 15, 2017

Individual evidence

1. ^ IAAF Statistics Handbook, Berlin 2009 Page 562 ( Memento from June 29, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 23, English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 15, 2017
3. ↑ ^{a b} Montréal 1976 Official Report, Volume III, Results , p. 67, English / French (PDF, 23 MB), accessed on December 15, 2017
4. ↑ SportsReference , accessed December 15, 2017