A few months ago I wrote a post on hurdle relays. At that time I did not think that this discipline will make it to the program of official championships. Well, I was wrong and I am glad about it. The program of the 2019 World Relays has been recently updated and, guess what, a mixed shuttle relay has made its appearance. It will be a somewhat curious event since women will have to run an extra 10 m at the end of their normal run, but since the relay is mixed it cannot be otherwise.
In fact there is a definite push now for mixed relays and it turns out that the second relay added to the Yokohama program is also a mixed one. It is announced as a 2x2x400 m relay, meaning that every team has two members, a man and a woman, who will have to run two legs of 400 m each. This is an excellent choice and I look forward to following it. The tactical choices may turn out to be of the utmost importance in this race, which will be equally appealing to specialists of 400 m and 800 m. By the way the, rather dull, 4x800 m relay is exiting the program.
While looking around for photos in order to illustrate this post of mine, I stumbled upon a decades old photo. I took a closer look and was really amazed: those guys were running against the hurdles. Apparently in the shuttle relays of that era (probably the 60s) there were as many teams as lanes and so one athlete out of two had to run against the hurdles! Well, those were heroic times. What is also interesting is that the author of the article (Ken Stones, a master athlete and blogger) where I found the link to the photo is reporting on some australian experiment (in the 00s) where the athletes could choose freely the spacing of the hurdles. This is precisely my "crazy" proposal in a post of mine, made in the purest Juilland spirit. It is satisfying to learn that other people have been thinking along the same lines.
In fact there is a definite push now for mixed relays and it turns out that the second relay added to the Yokohama program is also a mixed one. It is announced as a 2x2x400 m relay, meaning that every team has two members, a man and a woman, who will have to run two legs of 400 m each. This is an excellent choice and I look forward to following it. The tactical choices may turn out to be of the utmost importance in this race, which will be equally appealing to specialists of 400 m and 800 m. By the way the, rather dull, 4x800 m relay is exiting the program.
While looking around for photos in order to illustrate this post of mine, I stumbled upon a decades old photo. I took a closer look and was really amazed: those guys were running against the hurdles. Apparently in the shuttle relays of that era (probably the 60s) there were as many teams as lanes and so one athlete out of two had to run against the hurdles! Well, those were heroic times. What is also interesting is that the author of the article (Ken Stones, a master athlete and blogger) where I found the link to the photo is reporting on some australian experiment (in the 00s) where the athletes could choose freely the spacing of the hurdles. This is precisely my "crazy" proposal in a post of mine, made in the purest Juilland spirit. It is satisfying to learn that other people have been thinking along the same lines.
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