This is going to make me so happy."It's been a real motivation for me to say that I would be retiring at the end of the Olympics. Their time over the last 500m was more than a second quicker than the Germans', but the gap was too great and the winning margin was a full two seconds.But if there was a hint of disappointment at failing to reverse the finishing order from Sydney four years ago, the Britons knew they had at least stretched themselves to the limit. Britain were fifth, but gradually turned up the power and at the 1500m mark had climbed to second. If it had been University Challenge or Mastermind they would surely have taken the gold, but this was the Olympic Games rowing regatta and Britain's women quadruple scullers had to settle for silver under the scorching sun on Lake Schinias here yesterday. Debbie Flood, Frances Houghton, Alison Mowbray and Rebecca Romero, who between them have more degrees than a Greek thermometer, were beaten to the line by a German crew vastly more experienced in the art of sculling. The man who made Marion Jones the world's fastest woman and who helped Tim Montgomery become the 100m world record holder has strenuously denied the claims.Not that such matters were of any immediate concern to Mark Lewis-Francis and Jason Gardener, whose failure to negotiate the semi-finals earlier last night made it the first Olympic men's 100m final without a British sprinter since the Montreal Games of 1976.Lewis-Francis trailed in fifth in the first semi, missing the cut for the final by one place and 0.06sec with a time of 10.28sec. The Germans steamed ahead, their time for the first quarter bettering that of any of their rivals over any of the 500m sections.

But when he clipped the upright, everybody knew for whom the bar rolled.. His grandfather was a cousin of Ernest Hemingway.The former white-water rafting guide would have taken gold on countback had he cleared his last attempt at 2.36m. Mike East, though, advanced to the final of the men's 1500m as the fastest "loser", finishing sixth in his semi-final in 3min 36.46sec.It was a good day for the hosts; Fani Halkia, a Greek television journalist, was roared to an Olympic record of 52.77sec in the semi-finals of the women's 400m hurdles. In the semi-finals of the women's 400m, Christine Ohuruogu, Donna Fraser and Lee McConnell all came to grief, placing fifth, seventh and eighth in their respective races.

Gardener was also fifth in the second race, clocking 10.12sec, his best time of the season.It was certainly not the best of days in the Olympic Stadium for Team GB. Maurice Greene, the defending champion, had to settle for the bronze medal, clocking 9.87sec, with the pre-race favourites Shawn Crawford and Asafa Powell fourth and fifth and the reigning world champion Kim Collins only sixth."This is why I shovel snow off North Carolina tracks in the middle of winter," Gatlin said "The race was magnificent I felt I was 100 miles above everybody else. It was so close, but that's how I felt."Back in 2002, Gatlin felt relieved when the International Association of Athletics Federations lifted the two-year suspension he had been given a year earlier after testing positive for a banned stimulant. The sport's governing body accepted medical advice that the offending substance had been contained in medication that the Brooklyn-born athlete had been taking since childhood to ease the symptoms of ADHD.Still, the cloud of doping hanging over sprinting in the States did cast a reflective shadow over Gatlin's victory. Like Crawford, the 22-year-old happens to be guided by Trevor Graham, the sprint coach who has emerged as a pivotal figure in the investigation into the activities of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative.In a memo leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle last month, Graham was revealed as the "mystery" coach who launched the whole inquiry - by sending a syringe containing the hitherto unknown and undetectable 'designer' steroid tetrahydrogestrinone, which has since become known as THG, to the US Anti-Doping Agency.An Olympic silver medallist with the Jamaican 4x400m relay team in Seoul in 1988, Graham has also been accused of supplying illegal performance-enhancing drugs to his athletes.