Beijing: Sanya Richards produced a stunning final leg to lead the United States to the women's 4x400 meters relay Olympic title here on Saturday as they timed 3min 18.54sec the fastest time in 15 years.
The victory compensated the 23-year-old Jamaican-born naturalised American for her disappointment in taking bronze in the individual event.
Russia finished second for the second successive Games while Jamaica took bronze also for the second Games running.
Richards had started well down on her opponents Anastasia Kapachinskaya after Tatiana Firova had overhauled Monique Henderson down the finishing straight of the third leg.
Kapachinskaya extended her lead down the back stretch and it looked to be an insurmountable task for Richards.
Coming off the bend there was still a sizeable gap, but Richards opted to go wide and bit by bit she reduced the Russian's lead, finally coming abreast of her with 20 meters to go.
Kapachinskaya dug deep and at one point looked like she had regained the initiative but Richards was not to be denied this time and passed her brave opponent to cross the line first, waving the baton in celebration.
There was to be no medal for 400m individual winner Christine Ohuruogu of Great Britain.
She opted to run the first leg after running a rather feeble final one in the heat but the quartet never looked like medalling after the second leg had been run and finished fifth.
Men's 4x400m Relay
The United States won the Olympic men's 4x400-meter relay gold medal for the seventh time in a row on Saturday in a Games record of 2mins 55.39secs.
Beijing 400m Olympic champion LaShawn Merritt, 400m hurdles Olympic champion Angelo Taylor, 400m bronze medallist David Neville and two-time world 400m champion Jeremy Wariner broke the old mark of 2:55.74 set by US men in 1992.
Bahamas, last year's world runner-up, were second in 2:58.03 with Russia third in 2:58.06.
American men have won the 4x400 relay 17 times in 21 tries, including 12 of the past 13 in which Americans have competed.
No US 4x400 relay has dropped a major global final since Britain won at the 1991 worlds.
Merritt, who topped the US 400m podium sweep, put the Americans ahead on the opening leg and Taylor stretched the margin before making the handoff to Neville, a carefully made pass given dropped batons by both US 4x100m relays.
Neville handed the stick to anchor man Wariner and the 2004 Olympic champion sped off, serving notice to the field the Americans would not be denied a seventh athletics gold.
Bahamas anchor Chris Brown surged into second and held off Russia's Denis Alexeev at the line.
Britain was fourth in 2:58.81 with Belgium fifth in 2:59.37 and Australia, the 2004 silver medallists, sixth in 3:00.02.
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