Steven Gardiner of the Bahamas won the Olympic 400 metres title on Thursday but it was the failure of the formerly all-conquering American men that was talk of the Tokyo track.

The US men won the 400m seven times in a row, culminating in two podium sweeps, up to 2008 but have now gone three Games without success and with only one medal.

The US 4x100 metres relay team finished at a disastrous sixth place in their heat, despite the team featuring two of the individual 100m finalists, Fred Kerley and Ronnie Baker, the world leader Trayvon Bromell, and Cravon Gillespie.

The performance led to an outpouring of fury from US athletics fans with former multi-Olympic champions Carl Lewis and Michael Johnson calling the performance and the team’s lack of preparation “an embarrassment”.

Britain qualified fastest in the women’s 4x100 relay but Jamaica, with their big-guns set to come into the team, look favourites for Friday’s final.

The US women are delivering and the US are achieving success in the field events too, as Ryan Crouser won the shot put and Katie Nageotte the pole vault. There were also gold medals for Jamaica’s Hansle Parchment in the 110m hurdles, Canada’s Damian Warner in the decathlon and Belgian Nafi Thiam in the heptathlon.

Gardiner delivered a perfectly-judged exhibition in the 400m, keeping calm as American Michael Norman went out like a train in the lane outside him. As Norman tied up, Gardiner powered through to add Olympic glory to his world title and earn his country’s first Tokyo gold.

Anthony Zambrano of Colombia took silver and Kirani James of Grenada completed his Olympic set having won gold in 2012 and silver in Rio.

American woe

There was more American woe in the 110 hurdles as Parchment ran down hot favourite and world champion Grant Holloway.

Warner led from the start to finish to win the men’s decathlon gold with a new Games record score of 9,018 points.

Thiam was almost as impressive in retaining her heptathlon title, with a Dutch double behind her in the form of Anouk Vetter and Emma Oosterwegel.

Nageotte needed three attempts to clear her pole vault opening height of 4.50 metres but her clearance of 4.90 on the second attempt was enough to secure victory ahead of Russian Anzhelika Sidorova and Holly Bradshaw of Britain.