LONDON, England – Former Norfolk State sprinter Chris Brown helped the Bahamas 4x400 meter relay team win the gold medal in the event in a national-record time on Friday evening.

The Bahamas finished in 2 minutes, 56.72 seconds. The United States took silver in 2:57.05 and Trinidad and Tobago won bronze in 2:59.40.

This marks Brown's first career Olympic gold medal. He helped the Bahamas win silver in the same event in 2008 in Beijing. Brown, who placed fourth in the individual 400 meters in 2008 and 2012, also owns gold medals from the 2007 Pan American Games (400 meters and 4x400 relay) and the 2010 World Indoor Championships (400 meters).

Brown and teammates Demetrius Pinder, Michael Mathieu and Ramon Miller also helped break the United States' stranglehold on the event Friday. The USA had won gold in the event at the last seven Olympics dating to the USSR's victory in Moscow in 1980, when the USA boycotted the Olympics. The last time an American 4x400 relay team participated in the relay and did not win was in 1952, when Jamaica edged the Americans at the Olympics hosted by Helsinki, Finland. (In 1972, the USA was forced to withdraw from the event.)

This marks the fifth Olympic gold medal that former NSU track athletes have won, all in relay events. Before Friday, the last of those medals came in 2000, when Chandra Sturrup (Bahamas), Brian Lewis (USA) and Tim Montgomery (USA) all won gold in the 4x100 meter relay in Sydney, Australia.