U.S. Seeks to Lift Athletes After Management Missteps

By SARA GERMANO, JOHN CARREYROU and SCOTT CACCIOLA

LONDON—America's track and field team enters the London Games in a funk.

For decades, its men's 4 x 100-meter relay team was one of the most successful in Olympic sports, winning gold in 15 of 20 Games through 2000. Then came the losing streak.

Great Britain won the relay finals in Athens in 2004. Four years later in Beijing, the U.S. team failed to finish in an embarrassing preliminary round. A distraught sprinter, Darvis "Doc" Patton, called his wife in Dallas after: "We dropped the baton," he said, breaking into tears. "We dropped the baton."