By Andy Schooler, Sportinglife.com

Britain's men crashed out of the 4x100 metres relay after messing up their final baton change.

Christian Malcolm was leading going into the final bend, but failed to hand over cleanly to anchor man Jonathan Barbour, who had set off early, and he was forced to pull up after just a few strides.

Malcolm then threw down the baton in anger and laid flat on his back for a few minutes in disbelief.

Dwain Chambers, who ran the opening leg, stormed off without waiting for his team-mates, shaking his head in frustration as he walked away from the track.

This had been the event in which Britain's sprint stars had aimed to salvage some pride and make up for the disappointment of failing to win a medal in the individual 100m or 200m races.

They believed they could challenge the American team all the way for the gold medal, especially as the favourites were missing their star man, Maurice Greene.

Mark Lewis-Francis was rested from the quarter-final heat, but qualification for Sunday night's semi-finals looked to be in the safe hands of Chambers, Marlon Devonish, Malcolm and Barbour

However, after being well on their way to comfortably progressing, the British team suffered agony on that final changeover.

The missed exchange adds to Britain's woes in the event in recent times.

They failed to complete the race at last year's Olympics when they were tipped for a medal and have also had similar problems in the 1990s.

"I cannot believe this has happened to us for a second major championships in a row," said Malcolm. "We are all gutted.

"We have practised together back home and out here a couple of times. We were all confident we could get a medal out there but we have not done ourselves justice again."

A dejected Malcolm refused to lay the blame at the lesser-known Barbour's door, the European under-23 champion having seemingly set off too early.

"He was fine. It was not his fault. He didn't go too soon.

"He's been in the GB team. He's come up trough the ranks the same as the rest of us.

"We'd done it (the changeover) twice at Crystal Palace and got a season's best. We'd done a couple out there as well.

"These things happen. Unfortunately it's happened two years on the trot."

The Welshman also said hopes had been high in the team.

"Seeing how so many have come close (in the individual sprints), I definitely thought we had a chance of a medal. But you take these things step by step, round by round."

Max Jones, performance director of the Great Britain team, said he was going to study a video of the race to see what went wrong.

"I won't know what went wrong until I have studied the video," said Jones. "I was at the far end of the stadium and did not see what happened, but I have been told that Jonathan went off too early.

"We had safety marks there, so it should not have been a problem for us. We have done plenty of practice changeovers.

"This should have been a stroll in the park for us."

Other heat winners were Brazil, Canada and, in Britain's heat, South Africa. But Cuba, like the British, also failed to get the baton round.