Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 119, June 2019 | Page 64

TRACK & FIELD
SA Qualifies for
World Champs Relays
The headline may sound a bit bizarre, but good performances by the South African teams at the recent World Relay
Championships in Yokohama, Japan on 11-12 May mean that South Africa will be eligible to field two relay teams at the
World Athletics Championships in Doha in October this year. – BY MANFRED SEIDLER
T
Let’s face it, relays are amongst the most exciting
of disciplines in the world of Track and Field. They
bring the drama of team sport to what is largely an
individual sport, including the agony of a dropped
baton potentially seeing the favourites bow out, and
you do not need to be fastest in the world to win,
you need consistency and slick handovers. That’s
why the relays traditionally bring the curtain down
on World Championship meets... they are exciting to
watch, and the athletes love them, often rising to the
occasion with superhuman efforts. LJ Van Zyl in 2011
in the 4x400m relay comes to mind. His blistering
anchor leg took South Africa from outside the medals
into silver, and other examples of such performances
abound.
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ISSUE 119 JUNE 2019 / www.modernathlete.co.za
he World Relay Championships were first
held in Nassau in the Bahamas in 2014 and
were originally supposed to be an annual
affair, until it was decided at the second World Relay
Championships in 2015, also in Nassau, that the event
would fall in line with the World Championships, and
thus be held every two years. This meant that the third
edition (again in the Bahamas) was held in May 2017.
These first three meets were a monumental success,
with the stands packed to the rafter each day as
the Caribbean spectators arrived in their droves to
witness the world’s best sprinters in action.