The Jamaican sprint sweep at the Olympics was completed yesterday by Veronica Campbell-Brown.
To make it even worse for the US team, both their men and the women failed to make it out of the first round in the 4x100-metre relay, each missing a handoff.
And on a night that kept getting worse for the Americans, the defending champion US softball team lost to Japan 3-1 and their top-ranked women's water polo team was defeated by the Netherlands 9-8.
Campbell-Brown, the defending champion in the women's 200, made it two in a row, winning the final sprint race of the Beijing Games in 21.74 seconds.
World champion Allyson Felix of the United States never fully recovered from a poor start and finished second in 21.93. Another Jamaican, Kerron Stewart, was third in 22.00.
Campbell-Brown's win was the fourth in four sprints for Jamaicans at the Bird's Nest. Usain Bolt won both the men's 100 and 200 — setting a world record in each — and Shelly-Ann Fraser the women's 100.
"Bolt set it off," said Stewart. "After that, I just think our camp went crazy."
The US men's relay team were knocked out of contention when Darvis Patton failed to hand the baton over to anchor Tyson Gay. In the other race, anchor Lauryn Williams flubbed her exchange with Torri Edwards.
"I went to grab it and there was nothing," said Gay. "It's kind of the way it's been happening to me this Olympics."
The American men did get a gold in the 400m, sweeping the medals when LaShawn Merritt upset defending champion Jeremy Wariner in the final.
Merritt pulled away to win in 43.75 seconds. Wariner was next in 44.74 and David Neville took bronze in 44.80 with a head-first dive across the finish line.
While Cuban world record-holder Dayron Robles stuck to the plan, easily winning the 110 hurdles in the absence of defending champion Liu Xiang of China.
Barbora Spotakova of the Czech Republic won the women's javelin on her final throw, setting a European record of 71.42 metres.
Olga Kaniskina also won gold at the Bird's Nest, finishing first in the 20-kilometre walk in an Olympic record of 1:26:31.
Earlier, Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh played through the rain to win their second straight gold medal in beach volleyball.
The American duo extended their winning streak to 108 matches in a 21-18, 21-18 win over Wang Jie and Tian Jia of China.
"The rain makes it better," said Walsh. "We felt like warriors out there."
That was about as good as the Americans fared on a day when the weather played havoc with the schedule, even pushing a pair of BMX cycling events back a day.
The American softball team had been trying to win a fourth straight gold medal in the sport's final appearance. The last time the US team lost an Olympic game was at the 2000 Sydney Games, a stretch of 22 straight wins.
In water polo, Danielle de Bruijn scored her seventh goal with 26 seconds left to get the gold.
"I don't think I've ever quite seen that," said US coach Guy Baker. "It is up there with some of the great performances, especially because she [de Bruijn] did it at the Olympics.
Dutch swimmer Maarten van der Weijden, who was diagnosed with leukemia in 2001, won gold in the men's 10-kilometre open water race in a three-way sprint.
David Svoboda of the Czech Republic set an Olympic modern pentathlon record for shooting points, but Andrey Moiseev of Russia took the gold.