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Humiliation in the sprint events has reached a peak for the United States.

The U.S. men's and women's relay squads both fumbled their last passes in qualifying heats to miss out on the climactic finals on Saturday. The botched exchanges were symbolic of what has happened to the U.S. runners at the Beijing Olympics. They're not passing on the glory and tradition in races U.S. sprinters used to consider a lock. They're not passing much of anything, or anyone.

Meanwhile, little Jamaica has followed double world record setter Usain Bolt to the top of the sprint world. The island country has invested in sport centres to lure its athletes home from U.S. schools and hothoused them in Jamaica with great results.

"We are now establishing the centres of excellence at UTECH [the University of Technology] and the University of the West Indies," Jamaican Sport Minister Olivia Grange said in an interview. "There's an institute of sport, where Usain's coach [Glen Mills] is the head coach.

"The current government is only a year old, but we've increased the budget for sport significantly. It's important for our young people."

In track and field's new world order, the United States is going home without a single gold in the six fastest races — the men's and women's 100 and 200 metres and the two sprint relay events. In those races, the United States has just three medals: a silver and two bronze. The Jamaicans have four gold, including Bolt's two world-record races, plus a silver and two bronzes, and likely will add another gold to the haul in the men's relay final.

They're in, and the Americans are out.

In qualifying events at the National Stadium on Thursday night, the Canadian relay squad used the advantage of calamity in the relay rounds to cruise into the final with a comfortable run that played out the witty slogan on the T-shirts they picked up as a team — "Stick around."

In the men's 800 metres, Gary Reed of Kamloops, the world championships silver medalist, advanced to Saturday's 800-metre final on a rainy night that he said made runners from Africa feel uncomfortable while it made him feel at home, "just like Victoria, where I train every day."

After the first day of the decathlon, University of Toronto-based Massimo Bertocchi fought through the wet day to stand 18th in a field of 30, accumulating 4,010 points and relishing a second day in which he usually gets stronger results.

The U.S. men's relay team failed to reach the Olympic final for the first time since 1912. The women's squad missed for the first time since 1948.

With the Americans out of the way, the Jamaicans are the hands-down favourite for the gold in the 4ƒxƒ100 men's race. They were second overall in the qualifying without two of their front-line runners. Jamaica was timed in a seasonal-best 38.31, beating out Canada at 38.77 in its heat. Trinidad and Tobago won the heat in which the Americans bobbled the stick in 38.26.

"It's going to be an awesome race," said Asafa Powell, the former world-record holder who is one of three sub-10-second runners in the Jamaican sprint pool. "I can't imagine what will happen, but I'm confident of getting the stick around."

Failure to do that was taken personally by the U.S. relay mates.

"I take full blame for it," Tyson Gay said of his inability to grab the stick from Darvis Patton on the last U.S. exchange. "I feel I let them down."

Gay, the world champion in the 100 and 200, didn't make a single final in Beijing.

Lauryn Williams's footnote in U.S. track disaster is that she has twice messed up Olympic exchanges and nullified two medal chances. In 2004, she failed to complete her pass with Marion Jones in the final and the U.S. quartet was disqualified for making the exchange outside the handoff zone.

"Maybe someone has a voodoo doll of me," she said. "I'm telling people it was the stick [the stick's fault]. ¡K If people want to blame me, they can blame me, I don't care. It was a bad day for us."

"This was our event," U.S. sprinter Torri Edwards added. "We were going to go to the finals and win. This is definitely very heartbreaking."

U.S. athletes hold six world championship titles — Felix (200), Gay (100 and 200), Bernard Lagat (1,500), Brad Walker (pole vault) and Reese Hoffa (shot put) — but could not convert those golds to Olympic golds.

Not so with Jamaica.

The 100 women's final was a Jamaican sweep, and before the relay qualifying, American Allyson Felix finished second behind Jamaican Veronica Campbell-Brown in the women's 200, adding her name to a long list of U.S. favourites who have been disappointing.

Bolt, the world-record holder at 9.69 seconds in the 100, is expected to be inserted into the Jamaican lineup. Leading off might be his best position, because in the middle of the pack, a teammate might not catch up to him with the baton.