Day 8: W 4x100m, M 4x100m, M Marathon, W HJ, M 4x400m

The Canadian team, thanks to their excellent exchanges, sped to victory in the women's sprint relay. Furthermore, their winning time of 48.4 seconds was inscribed in the list of world records at the end of the season.

The relay quartet carrying the baton included Fanny "Bobbie" Rosenfeld, Ethel Smith, Jane Bell, and Myrtle Cook. The entire team was assembled from the Toronto area. Key to Canada's victory was Cook, who had run a 100-metre world record in the country's Olympic qualifiers and powered through the anchor leg with fire under her tail. Thus, the lady took revenge for the individual 100-metre event, where she had been disqualified due to a completely botched start.

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The United States sped along the inside lane to victory in the men's sprint relay with a time of 41.0, which equaled the world record. Frank Wykoff, James Quinn, Charley Borah, and Henry Russell carried the baton. The German squad consisted of a quartet with strong statistical times, who competed evenly with the Americans for the first three legs. The last exchange went awry for the Germans, but those coming from behind did not threaten Germany's second place.

Canada, strengthened by  Percy Williams, who had already won the 100 and 200, was a medal favorite. However, the third exchange, like Germany's, went poorly, and Williams fell in the scramble. The team was ruthlessly disqualified.

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As the banks of the Amstel River and the windmills alongside them beckoned the 42-kilometre devourers, Amsterdam enjoyed beautiful, calm, albeit cloudy weather. The race traditionally only truly began around the 35-kilometre mark, when Japan's Kanematsu Yamada and Ville Ritola's tough competitor from across the pond, Joie Ray, were leading. Bouguera El Ouafi, of Algerian descent but representing France and shuffling with short strides, paced behind the leading duo until he hobbled to the front with Yamada.

Ray, running his third 42-kilometer race, then surged into the lead. The Stars and Stripes did not wave for long, as the American was caught in the final kilometer. "My strength just ran out. The weather was also cold," Ray explained to Finnish journalists when they were invited to visit the US ship on which the team travelled to Europe.

El Ouafi Attacks in the Final Kilometres

Next, it was El Ouafi's turn to rattle the insides of his competitors. He had a fit of madness, surged past both Ray and Yamada, and sped off towards Olympic gold. Manuel Plaza, a newsboy from Santiago, Chile, also began to awaken. He climbed close to El Ouafi in the final kilometers of the marathon and took silver. The Chilean received the most effusive reception at the finish line, as his better half took the runner's head between her hands and kissed his face full.

Martti Marttelin, a Finnish farmer who later fell in the Russo–Finnish Winter War, overtook Ray, who had been lurking in the shadows, and moved into third place shortly before the finish. The finish order was El Ouafi, Plaza, and Marttelin. All three podium places thus went to different continents, proving the international nature of the sport as early as 1928. (El Ouafi is placed in this context in his ancestral lands, Algeria.)

The 29-year-old El Ouafi first got a taste for devouring kilometres by serving as a runner for the French Foreign Legion. In the Olympic year of Amsterdam, he earned his living working as a migrant worker in a Parisian car factory.

"I observed Marttelin, and when I noticed he was getting tired, I sped up," chatted the vegetarian and friend of light milk diluted with water, El Ouafi, after the race, asking reporters for a cigarette.

Marttelin said he had poured all his strength onto the banks of the Amstel River. "In the last six kilometres  , I longed for strong sugar syrup. However, only cold tea was available, which was no help. The hard cobblestone street also strained my calves."

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Ethel Catherwood, from Saskatchewan province but having lived in Toronto for the past year, and Lien Gisolf, a teenager from the Netherlands who had set a world record earlier in the season, competed fiercely for the high jump trophy in Amsterdam. Ethel had to clear a new world record height of 1.595 (5-2¾) before the Olympic gold travelled to Canada. The bar was raised to 1.60 (5-2¾), but half a centimetre was trimmed from the result during a verification measurement. The result was recorded as 1.59 (5-2½) in the official world record books.

Even Finnish sports journalist Martti Jukola was inspired to describe the competition as the best women's event of the Amsterdam Games in in 1952, even though he had turned up his nose at women's athletics 24 years earlier.

The tall and gorgeous Ethel Catherwood was an aesthetically oriented athlete who attracted admiring glances wherever she went. When Catherwood was jumping at the Amsterdam training grounds, members of the Finnish team also discreetly gathered near the high jump area, prompting the sports leader Tahko Pihkala to order the boys back to training.

Later, Catherwood was torn apart by the yellow press. She considered her athletic career an unhappy phase of her life. When asked for an interview by Today magazine in 1980, the lady replied that she was not interested.

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The American quartet of George Baird, Fred Alderman, Emerson "Bud" Spencer, and Ray Barbuti carried the baton fastest four times around the track. A new world record of 3:14.2 was registered on the scoreboard. 

Spencer, the 400-metre world record holder who had botched his own performance in the US trials, ran his team's fastest individual time of 47.8 on the third leg, thus collecting at least one gold medal from the Amsterdam festivities. German anchor Hermann Engelhard ran the last leg with fierce determination and collapsed into the arms of his teammates after crossing the finish line. He managed to narrow the US lead to five metres.

The long relay in Amsterdam had a high level of competition. The first three teams – the United States, Germany, and Canada – all ran under the old world record.

The US record did not last long, as almost the same team ran 4x440 yards in 3:13.4 in London a couple of weeks later, which corresponded to a metric time of 3:12.2. The result 3:13.4 was recorded in the official 4x400 metres world record parchment.

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Day 8 Newspaper Stories 

• Glasgow Herald, August 6,  1928 

• Montreal Gazette, August 6, 1928 

• Helsingin Sanomat, August 6,  1928 (in Finnish)

• Turun Sanomat, August 6,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Aamulehti, August 6,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Karjala, August 6, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Iltalehti, August 6,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Hufvudstadsbladet, August 6,  1928 (in Swedish)

• Uusi Aura, August 6, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Tampereen Sanomat, August 6,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Helsingin Sanomat, August 7, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Uusi Suomi, August 7, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Turun Sanomat, August 7,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Aamulehti, August 7,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Vaasa, August 7, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Uusi Aura, August 7,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Helsingin Sanomat, August 8,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Uusi Suomi, August 8,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Iltalehti, August 8,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Vaasa, August 10,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Karjala, August 10, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Uusi Aura, August 10,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Suomen Kuvalehti, August 11, 1928  (photos)

• Viikko-Sanomat , August 11, 1928  (in Finnish)

• Hakkapeliitta, August 11,  1928 (photos)

• Helsingin Sanomat, August 13,  1928  (in Finnish)

• Kansan Kuvalehti, August 17,  1928  (photos)

• Hakkapeliitta, August 18, 1928 (photos)

• Urheilija Olympic Edition 8-9/1928  (photos)