China makes it to men's sprint final of IAAF World Relays

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Europe

China advanced from a strong field on Saturday night to make Sunday's finals of the men's 4x100 meters relay at the IAAF World Relays in Yokohama, Japan.

The Chinese finished their heat in 38.51 seconds, behind favorites United States who had a time of 38.34 seconds.

Wu Zhiqiang ran the first leg for China but trailed the field. Xie Zhenye however quickly made up ground by overtaking five rival athletes, but he was no match for Justin Gatlin who ran the second leg for the U.S.

Su Bingtian, China's ace racer, ran the third leg and responded to expectations by dashing into the top 2 before passing to anchor Liang Jinsheng who pushed hard but could not catch American Cameron Burrell, who led his team home first.

Canada finished in third place, in 38.76 seconds. Japan was disqualified because of a faulty baton change.

In women's 4x100m relay preliminaries, China fell a victim of disqualification. The Chinese were eliminated in the men's and women's 4x400m relay heats.

In Heat 1, Britain and Brazil qualified as top 2 of the group while Italy and France made it to the finals as top 2 from Heat 2. Jamaica and Turkey achieved the best performance of the rest countries and thus will compete with the other six countries in the finals on Sunday.