How difficult is it to pass a baton on properly ?

I don't want to put a downer on our amazing Olympics from a team GB point of view, but I have to ask, as someone who used to run the third leg in 4x100 relay for my school, how difficult is it to pass a baton on properly ?

I've just watched the Americans drop the baton and go out (with three other teams) and then watched Great Britain rather bizarrely mess up their last change over with a schoolboy error, and I remember back to the summer of 1986 when as part of my school's team practising for the County sports we practised change overs, when to start running, how to pass on the baton, and as I recall our change overs were slick, no looking back over shoulders, and were far better than those achieved by our athletes today.

For all our triumphs, I hope someone is making a note of all the basic errors, all the missed opportunities and areas for improvement so that our medal haul in 2012 can be better than this time, not worse.

We could see from the TV that our team were gutted to be disqualified, but you have to ask how they could lose like this. I can applaud any UK athlete who goes out, does their very best and comes eight in their heat, but those athletes who go out and shoot themselves in the foot by making technical errors really exasperate me.