updated 12:23 a.m. ET Aug. 29, 2004

ATHENS, Greece - Maurice Greene grabbed the baton and accelerated toward the finish, blowing past a Nigerian and reeling in Britain’s Mark Lewis-Francis.

But even the self-proclaimed greatest sprinter of all time could not make up for a sloppy handoff earlier in the race Saturday, and his chest crossed the line just a hair behind the Brit’s. The United States was forced to settle for silver by an excruciating hundredth of a second on a night their teammates easily won gold in two other relays.

“I almost caught him in the end, but almost isn’t good enough,” Greene said. “I hope we pleased the fans and I hope we didn’t let anybody down. If we did, I apologize.”

The mighty men of U.S. sprinting, who’ve dominated the Athens Games with five of the six medals in the 100 and 200, lost the 400-meter relay for only the fifth time in Olympic history.

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A sloppy baton pass from Justin Gatlin to Coby Miller in the middle of the race left Greene too much ground to make up.

“Because of the crowd noise I couldn’t hear Gatlin call ‘stick,”’ said Miller, who ran the third leg. “So I slowed down, because if I had run out of my pass zone we wouldn’t have won a medal at all.”

Gatlin said he stepped on Miller’s foot and ripped a hole in his shoe, “just like somebody cut it with scissors.”

“Thank God I didn’t cut him,” Gatlin said. “I think he did a good job making up ground, especially with a ripped shoe.”

One night earlier, a bad handoff from Marion Jones to 100 silver medalist Lauryn Williams knocked the heavily favored U.S. women out of their relay.

The U.S. team finished with 24 track and field medals, tops among all nations and the most by Americans since 30 in 1992. The men had 18 — also the best showing since 1992 — but the six women’s medals were the fewest since three in 1976.

Greene took the baton in second place and with a burst of speed in the final 30 meters, he almost made up the gap behind Lewis-Francis. If the race was five meters longer, he probably would have won.

Lewis-Francis crossed the finish line and turned to yell in Greene’s direction. His British team won in 38.07 seconds, and the Americans won silver in 38.08 — after saying for days they would smash the world record of 37.40. Nigeria took bronze.

“I wasn’t worried about Maurice Greene, I knew I had it as soon as I got the baton,” Lewis-Francis said. “We have proved everyone wrong today. Everyone ran the race of their life.”

Since 1920, the United States had won every 400-meter relay except for a silver in 1996, disqualifications in 1960 and 1988 for going out of the exchange zone, and the 1980 boycotted games.

On Saturday, instead of preening and clowning on the victory stand as they did with their gold medals in 2000, the relay team was subdued as they accepted their silver.

Track & field - Men's 4x100-meter Relay (medals: Aug. 28th) Medal Athlete Country Result Gold Gardener, Campbell, Devonish, Lewis-Francis Britain 38.07 Silver Crawford, Gatlin, Miller, Greene United States 38.08 Bronze Fasuba, Emedolu, Egbele, Aliu Nigeria 38.23 NBCO: Schedules, preliminary result and complete final results

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