Apparently, USA Track and Field doesn’t care that it cannot come up with sprint-relay teams who can get a baton around a track.

Any time the U.S. has a quartet of sprinters — male or female — running in a major event, American fans who have been paying attention know they may soon need to cover their eyes.

(Eight years ago, at Beijing 2008, I saw both the men’s and women’s sprint relay team fail to complete the three handoffs, throwing away medals in the process, and driving me to distraction.)

And here we are, eight years later, and apparently no one in USAT&F seems to notice the embarrassing mess that is its relay teams.

Because the men screwed it up tonight, and had to give up what appeared to have been a bronze-medal finish … coming one day after the women dropped the baton in qualifying.

In a way, we can understand that it can be tricky for one world-class sprinter to hand a baton to another world-class sprinter in a clearly defined zone … while not dropping it or violating that clearly defined zone. Lots of legs and arms churning, a powerful sense of urgency, not much time spent practicing …

Achieving it apparently is hard as hell for the Americans.

As the New York Times noted: “American teams have been disqualified for dropping the baton or passing outside the zone in four of the last six 4×100-meter relays coming into the Rio Games. The men in 2008 and 2012 and the women in 2004 and 2008 all failed to make it around the track successfully.”

Make that six disqualifications in the past eight Olympic 4×100 relays.

And three in succession for the U.S. men, when they were disqualified tonight. (Though the 2012 DSQ came after Tyson Gay failed a drug test.)

Going back even further, it seems that the U.S. sprint relays teams have been disqualified nine times in the Olympics or World Championships since 1995.

The trouble this time came in the handoff from the first runner (Mike Reynolds) to the second (Justin Gatlin). Officials decided that the handoff began too soon, violating the rules. USA Today has been kind enough to explain the rule that was broken.

It was a bit difficult to feel bad for the U.S. guys, even after they had paraded around the stadium to celebrate “winning” bronze. They found out while still on the track. Just before NBC was going to interview them.

“It was a nightmare,” Gatlin said. “You work so hard with your teammates, guys you compete against almost all year long. All that hard work just crumbles.”

Well, that can be fixed. Hand over the baton legally.

Thing is, other countries get this right. Usain Bolt and his Jamaican teammates have successfully taken the baton around the track in three successive Olympics — winning gold in each case.

But the U.S. …

The women also had relay issues, but their disqualification was appealed and the U.S. complaint that a Brazilian runner interfered with the U.S. exchange was upheld.

That led to the U.S. team running alone in the stadium, and if the four women bettered the slowest time (China’s) in the final eight, they would be allowed to run in the final.

They did and they ran in the final and they won gold tonight — which changes the DSQ statistic to only five out of the past eight Olympic sprint relays.

Still unforgivable, and I blame the coaches. Just as I did in the 2008 post I linked to, above.

Don’t send a team out there if it cannot complete handoffs. Even if it means running (in the final) with the slightly slower guys who ran the early stages of relays.

It’s an embarrassment, an embarrassment that grows larger with each successive failure to relay the baton.