Out in front Gabby Thomas was already raising her hands to her head, overcome with the realisation that she had just this very moment become the Olympic 200m champion.
A couple of strides behind her, the new 100m champion Julien Alfred was striding smoothly through the line in second place, and there just a little further back still, came Dina Asher‑Smith, Daryll Neita, and the USA’s Brittany Brown, shoulder‑to‑shoulder-to-shoulder in lanes 4, 5, and 6, with just the three‑hundredths of a second between them. All three of them were struggling with everything they had for that last extra millimetre that would win them the bronze. It was Brown who got it.
