Over the last 20 years, the U.S. has botched the art of the handoff in every way imaginable. A revamped approach could change that trend.
Mechelle Lewis Freeman had an hour to kill before finding out if she killed her career. She was in Eugene, Ore., for the 2022 World Athletics Championships. Freeman, in her first year as the U.S.’s women’s relay head coach, woke up on the morning of the 4 × 100 final and made a decision that, for more than a century, would have been heretical: She benched her fastest sprinter.
The trouble with prayer is that sometimes deities are in the other lane. Jamaica had won Olympic relay gold the year before and had just swept the individual medals in the women’s 100 in Eugene. There is nothing in Olympic history quite like what the U.S. has done in men’s track relays: an extended period of dominance, followed immediately by a long stretch of ineptitude. From 1920 to 2004, American men competed in the 4 × 100 in 19 Olympics. They won 15 gold medals and two silvers. Since then, the U.S. men have made regular summer trips to DQ: They have been disqualified in three of the last four Olympics, as well as the ’09, ’11 and ’15 world championships.
The U.S. men's 4x100 relay team was disqualified in the 2016 final for Mike Rodgers's early handoff to Justin Gatlin outside of the designated zone. / Photograph by Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports, the U.S. viewed the 4 × 100 as a chance to put the four fastest 100-meter sprinters in a race together. But it is not as simple as four consecutive 100-meter races.
Ideally, a team can refine exchanges with practice. But there is a six-week gap between the Olympic Trials and the Olympics, and Marsh says that “of those six weeks, we are fortunate if we have four days of preparation.” Freeman says they hope every exchange in the Olympics involves runners who have had three such exchanges at race pace this year—which would be a massive improvement.
The first reason is physics: The best way to maximize exchange speed is to eliminate the velocity gaps between runners. If two sprinters are running at the same pace at the time of the handoff, they effectively turn a high-speed exchange into a low-speed one. Imagine if you had to give a friend in another car a high five on the highway. It would be a lot easier if you were both going the same speed.
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