Allyson Felix & USA Win 2012 Olympic Women's 4x100-Meter Relay Gold Medal

Carmelita Jeter and Allyson Felix have been battling head-to-head throughout the 2012 Olympics, but on Friday the two best American runners were able to put their substantial talents together in leading the United States to a gold medal in the women's 4x100-meter relay race in world record time, finishing in 40.82 seconds. The team blew past the previous record of 41.35, set by East Germany in 1985.

Jeter has the overall medal lead on Felix at these Games, winning a silver in the 100-meter dash and bronze in the 200. She added a third to that collection thanks to Team USA's impressive run today. 

What Felix has lacked in overall success—which is a relative term since she now has two medals—she has made up for in wins. Unlike Jeter, she already had a gold medal to wrap around her neck thanks to a victory in the 200-meter race on Wednesday. 

Team USA entered the race as one of the favorites to medal, especially after posting the fastest time in qualifying at 41.64 seconds. That was nearly seven-tenths of a second better than Trinidad and Tobago in the first heat.

Granted, there are a lot of teams that will pull up late as long as they know they qualified for the finals, but that is still an impressive margin of victory under any circumstances.

This is sweet redemption for the Americans. Four years ago, Team USA didn't even make it to the finals of this event after being disqualified in the first round. 

All it took was four years and a new collection of talent, but the United States was able to find itself with a medal in the 4x100-meter relay once again. 

1	United States	40.82
2	Jamaica	41.41
3	Ukraine	42.04
4	Nigeria	42.64
5	Germany	42.67
6	Netherlands	42.70
7	Brazil	42.91
8	Trinidad and Tobago	DNF

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