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¶In the 400-meter men's relay, California's Ray Norton, 22, set out to atone for his humiliating, sixth-place finishes in both the 100 and 200 meters. Running the second leg, Norton was so anxious to get going that he sprinted right out of the exchange zone before he got the baton. Duke's Dave Sime, the U.S. anchorman, later finished first by a flicker, but Norton's foul disqualified the U.S. team, gave the gold medal to Germany. "I'm sick up to here with running," said Norton, pre-Olympic favorite to win three gold medals. "When I get back home, I'm not going to move faster than a slow walk.''
As expected, Russia easily defeated the U.S. for the unofficial team title by mining a lode of gold medals in such sports as women's gymnastics (5) and women's track (6). Unexpectedly, the proud U.S. men's track team won only nine gold medals (v. 15 in the 1956 Olympics), set chauvinistic officials to charging that the best event of American athletes was the marathon of wine, women and song. Lost in the furor was the obvious fact that the U.S. still easily dominated men's track (runner-up Russia had five gold medals) and had, in fact, sprung major surprises of its own on the world by grabbing nine gold medals in swimming, three in wrestling and three in boxing. By far the soundest judgment on the U.S. performances at the 1960 Olympic Games came from Manhattan College's canny George Eastment, a coach of the men's track team: "We're not a race of supermen, and it's about time we realized that the rest of the world can produce athletes too."