Justin Gatlin headlined a U.S. team that won the 4x100m on Saturday at the Penn Relays, the oldest annual outdoor track and field meet in the U.S.
Gatlin, who won the 2017 World 100m title in Usain Bolt‘s last individual race, ran the second leg to widen a lead over Jamaica at Franklin Field in Philadelphia.
Gatlin’s quartet -- with Lashon Collins, Tevin Hester and Justin Walker -- clocked 38.39 seconds and easily prevailed by .33 over another U.S team that included 2012 Olympian and former NFL player Jeff Demps.
Gatlin, 36, is expected to race the 100m at a Diamond League meet in Shanghai on May 12. World 100m silver medalist Christian Coleman and Olympic 100m bronze medalist Andre De Grasse are also entered in the meet.
Jamaica, with two-time Olympian Nesta Carter leading off, finished .78 behind for third place on Saturday. In 2016, the 32-year-old Carter was retroactively banned from the Beijing Olympics after one of his 2008 drug-test samples came back positive for a banned stimulant in a retest.
That meant Carter and the Jamaican 4x100m team was stripped of gold medals, which brought Bolt’s total down to eight Olympic golds overall. Carter appealed to get the medals back. No verdict has been announced.
Jamaica held off a U.S. quartet by .04 in the women’s 4x100m, clocking 43.14.
The Jamaican quartet included three-time Olympic medalist Kerron Stewart, while the U.S. had Aaliyah Brown, who led off the Americans’ world champion team last summer, and Kimberlyn Duncan, who was sixth in the 200m at the 2017 Worlds.
The U.S. swept the 4x400m and sprint medley relays.
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