In the heat of the handover
Running the relay isn’t quantum physics, but it does call for some chemistry — just ask the U.S.
PARIS A hollow tube, no more than 30 centimetres in length, slick to the grip. So simple, in theory and in kinetics.
And yet a baton exchange that doesn’t go smoothly can completely cock up a relay race.
Just ask the chronically oopsie United States men’s 4x100-metre squad, which has been disqualified on 13 occasions at the Olympics. At the Tokyo Games three years ago, favoured to win gold, the Americans botched the handover three times in a single heat and failed to even qualify for the final. “It was a total embarrassment,” an incandescently enraged Carl Lewis posted on Twitter.
“If you look at it, it’s four people running around the track at very high speeds with a thing that’s not magnetic or stuck to your hand,” explains sprinter Jerome Blake, a member of the multi-decorated Canadian quartet vying for 4x100 hardware in Paris. “You have to pass it to the next person and then the speed of the baton determines how fast you run; it’s not the speed of the person who’s running, it’s the speed of the baton itself, which has to continuously move at a very high speed.
“So the incoming runner has to match the outgoing runner at a maximum speed, where the baton does not slow down, it speeds up. The pass to the outgoing runner has to be made while the outgoing runner is at maximum acceleration. That’s when good teams are running really fast, because they’re matching the speed of the baton while they’re running.”
Got it? This isn’t quantum physics. But all the while, runners have other preoccupations: stay in your lane, don’t step on a line, avoid jostling, do not crash. And blaze.
Kyra Constantine, expected to run for the Canadian women’s 4x400 relay team that placed an excruciatingly close fourth in the last two Olympics but third at the World Athletics relays in May, says the squad will be training all aspects of the relay at their pre-Paris camp in Barcelona. But it’s no surprise that baton bobbles occur.
“Just because there’s so much going on. If the race is close, you have people coming at you and you’re trying to go out and there’s people pushing. And it’s just a mumbojumbo situation where you really have to stay focused on who’s coming in, but be aware of who’s around you so that you don’t trip or drop the baton.
“It’s such an high-intensity situation, and you really have to lock in to make sure that you get the baton away cleanly.”
The Canadian men — Blake, Andre
De Grasse, Aaron Brown and Brendon Rodney — initially copped bronze in Tokyo, but the medal was eventually upgraded to silver after the second-place British team was disqualified because of a doping violation. They also claimed gold at the world championships two years ago but didn’t make the final last year, where De Grasse sat out the heats to save himself for the 200metre final two hours later.
It’s a dominant foursome — three of them have been together since 2015 — with a quality of confident pre-eminence they’ll take into Paris.
“I think we’re capable of great things,” says Blake, who failed to qualify for his 200-metre individual specialty, coming off a yearlong setback caused by two fractures in his lumbar spine.”
“We’ve won Olympic medals, we’ve won world championship medals. Canadian sprinting is back.”
Their chemistry provides a deep well of chemistry. “It’s the camaraderie that we have,” says Blake, who joined the team in 2018. “Because it’s a trust thing with relay running. The more you trust the person that you’re running to and you trust the person who’s running to you, the easier it is to execute your best time and win medals.”
The women’s 4x400 complement posted a season best in one of the heats at the World Athletics competition in Jamaica. “(It) is just such a deep event right now; the top five teams are insane,” says Constantine, referring to Jamaica, the U.S., Netherlands, Britain and Canada.
“Out of all the events I do, (it) is one of my favourites because I get to go out there with a team,” adds Constantine, who failed to qualify in the 400 metres, her specialty, undone by a muscle injury that sidelined her for six weeks.
“Even though it’s a gruelling race, it’s kind of comforting to know you’re doing it with a team.
“In the individual event, you’re the only person on the line. For the relay, you don’t want to be the one person that messes up. That might also be why you run faster, because at the end of the day you want to make sure that you did your part for the team.”
The national record of 49.91 seconds in the women’s 400 is one of the longest-standing in Canadian track and field, set by Olympic silver medallist Marita Payne-Wiggins in Los Angeles in 1984. But runners have been closing in on it over recent months.
“I really think we can do it,” says Constantine. “I was actually thinking about that this morning — wow, we can actually break the record, we can crack that number.”
The women’s 4x100 also punched their ticket to the Olympics for the first time since 2016. But the men’s 4x400 squad failed to seize the final qualifying spot in a last-ditch shot in Nassau.