In a pair of heats highlighted by disqualifications and teams not finishing, the Canadian team of Browne, who ran the anchor, Henry, Hank Palmer and Jared Connaughton ran a superb race finishing in 38.77 seconds.
Jamaica won the heat, despite not having world 100-metre and 200-metre record holder Usain Bolt in the lineup, with a time of 38.31.
Also qualifying from their heat were Germany (38.93) and China (39.13).
In the other heat, Trinidad had the all-around fastest time of 38.26 seconds to easily qualify for the final, along with Japan (38.52), the Netherlands (38.87) and Brazil (39.01).
Missing from tomorrow morning’s final at the Bird’s Nest Track will be the teams from Great Britain and Italy which were disqualified for leaving their lanes. The teams from Nigeria, Poland, the United States and Russia did not finish after mishandling the hand-off of the baton.
The heat featuring the heavily favoured Americans, was run in a downpour.
Also tomorrow morning, Mississauga’s Chris Pellini will be competing in the K-4 (four-man kayak) 1,000-metre final.
The Canadians edged into the final after earning the third and final qualifying spot in the semi-finals.
The men’s field hockey team, which includes Mississauga’s Wayne Fernandes, Scott Sandison and Ranjeev Deol, equalled Canada’s best finish at the Olympics, by placing 10th after a 3-0 loss to Belgium.
The Olympics are also over for Mississauga Track and Field Club’s Nicole Forrester.
The lanky high jumper sprained her left ankle during a training session on Monday and the injury hampered her performance this morning at the Olympics. Forrester bowed out of the qualifying round after failing to clear the bar at 1.93 metres.
Forrester said later she was satisfied with her performance given the injury.
"I just wanted to be able to leave it all out there and do all I could do and I felt like I did that today," she said.
"Only yesterday in training did I start to feel confident with it," Forrester said of the injury.
It's not the first time an injury has plagued Forrester in an Olympic year. An ankle injury a month prior to the Games in Athens four years ago kept her home. She suffered from Achilles tendinitis in 1997, pulled her right hamstring one month before the 1998 Commonwealth Games and tore the attachment to her Achilles at the Pan Am Games in 1999.
Still, in Beijing, she managed to clear the bar at heights of 1.80 metres, 1.85 metres and 1.89 metres before bowing out. The standard to advance to the final was 1.96 metres or at least to be among the top-12 jumpers in the qualifying roung.
The 31-year-old high jumper won her third straight national high jump title at the Canadian track and field championships held in Windsor back in June with a leap of 1.95 metres. She plans to continue competing this year and next, and hinted at the possibility of trying to qualify for London in 2012.
“That would be the longest I would go is another four years, unless it's not fun anymore and I'm not jumping any higher,” she said.
dwiner@mississauga.net
