Dina Asher-Smith had expected to bring the curtain down on an exceptional European championships for Britain by leading the 4×100m women to gold. Instead she was left with her hands on her hips as the ghosts of relays past came back to haunt the team.
Dropped batons used to be one of those perennial British problems, alongside late-running trains and bad food at motorway service stations.
And between the Atlanta Games in 1996 and the world championships in Beijing in 2015, a GB 4×100m team dropped the baton or were disqualified 11 times in an Olympics or world championships.
However in recent years Britain have turned baton-changing into an art form – and reaped the rewards. So it was a major surprise to see Imani‑Lara Lansiquot hold out her hand for the baton on the second leg – and her teammate Asha Philip fail to get it to her. It meant the team were left shaking their heads as the German team delighted the 50,000 home crowd by taking gold.