The Indian women's 4x400m relay quartet ended up a distant seventh at the Olympic Stadium in Athens on Saturday to bring down the curtain on the country's campaign at the Games on a disappointing note.
The foursome of S Geeta, K M Beenamol, Chitra K Soman and Rajwinder Kaur came home in 3 minutes, 28.51 seconds, slower than the new national best of 3:26.89 seconds they posted on Friday in qualifying for the final.
The Indians made a surprising change to the line-up that ran in the semi-finals. They replaced Manjit Kaur, who had run a blistering anchor leg and enabled the squad to finish third and qualify for the final, with Geeta.
Geeta ran the first leg in the final while Rajwinder Kaur, who began the race in the semis, did the last lap, with Beenamol and Chitra running the second and third legs respectively.
The United States took the gold medal in 3:19.01 seconds. The silver was grabbed by Russia (3:20.16) and Jamaica settled for the third place in (3:22.00).
The Indians finished behind the three medal winners and Britain (3:25.12), Poland (3:25.32) and Romania (3:26.81) in that order.
This was the last event for the 75-strong Indian contingent after the exit of freestyle grapplers Sushil Kumar (60kg) and Sujit Mann (74kg) in the elimination rounds earlier in the day.
The contingent came away with the lone silver medal in shooting, won by Major Rajyawardhan Singh Rathore, in the first week of the Games.
