Olympics: Italy wins gold in 4x100m relay race

Tokyo: Italy won a gold medal – the third one today – in the 4x100m relay race at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo on Friday.

Italy set a new national record time of 37.50, with Britain coming a hundreth of a second behind to take silver and Canada taking bronze.

Italy’s winning team comprised Lorenzo Patta, Fausto Desalu, Filippo Tortu and the newly-crowned individual 100m world champion Marcell Jacobs.

This takes Italy’s medal count up to 38, setting a new record for the country, and placing it in seventh place on the table.

Half an hour before the relay race Italy’s Luigi Busà broke the nation’s previous record of 36 medals – achieved in Los Angeles in 1932 and Rome in 1960 – by winning gold in the men’s karate ‘kumite’ competition in the -75kg category.