DOHA, Qatar — For the U.S. team, the world championship debut of the 4×400 mixed relay team will go down in history.
Michael Cherry erased a near 100-meter deficit to Poland in the anchor leg and secured a victory of over two seconds in Sunday’s IAAF World Outdoor Track and Field Championships at Khalifa International Stadium to give the inaugural title to the United States, which set a world record of 3 minutes, 9.34 seconds and gave Allyson Felix her record-breaking 12th world championship title.
For the sport, the debut showed that the event could leave an indelible mark.
“It’s taking limitations off,” said Jessica Beard, who ran the second leg in the U.S.’s preliminary round and served as “team captain.” “You always hear, ‘The men can’t run with the women. The women can’t run with the men.’ And now we’re doing it together in world record fashion.”
The world record, which the U.S. previously owned from 2016 at 3:13.60, was first broken in Saturday’s preliminaries as Tyrell Richard, Beard, Jasmine Blocker and Obi Igbokwe clocked a 3:12.42. While the U.S. opted to replace its entire team for the final, it stuck to the order of man-woman-woman-man that most teams have used.
“Did you see him lead off and him finish?” Beard said, pointing to Richard and Igbokwe. “As a female, no offense, if I run 49 (seconds) I’m not catching a 44 or a 45. You have to run it that fast or faster. I think it’s great the way that it’s done. You can do it another way, but why?”
Poland found that out the hard way on Sunday.
After leading with its two male runners, Wiktor Suwara and Rafal Omelko, Poland boasted a massive lead following the second and third laps. But as Justyna Swiety-Ersetic was passed the baton for the anchor leg, she couldn’t maintain it for more than 200 meters before Cherry overtook her.
By the end, Poland finished in fifth at 3:12.33, and Jamaica and Bahrain won the silver and bronze medals at 3:11.78 and 3.11.82, respectively.
For the fans of the sport, Cherry cruising past Swiety-Ersetic for the U.S.’s come-from-behind win provided exactly the type of excitement that Beard believes will make the event special.
“For the fans, I think it gives them the reality that, you know we make it look easy on TV when you’re sitting at home on the couch. Anybody can’t do this,” she said. “I just think bringing perspective to our sport also brings respect to our sport and for what we do.”
As for the next generation of track athletes, the competition spreads an image previously unseen to a major event audience.
“To see men and women coming together, it just makes it more exciting,” Richard said. “Younger kids are probably going to say, ‘Oh I can run with a guy, I can run with a girl.’ It just boosts confidence.”
The mixed 4×400 relay first appeared at the 2017 Nitro Athletics Series in Melbourne, Australia, and was later raced at the 2017 World Relay Finals.
Next year, the mixed relays will be one of nine new mixed-gender events added to the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, which doubles the number from the 2016 Olympics in Rio.
At the time of its announcement in 2017, International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach said he was “delighted that the Olympic Games in Tokyo will be more youthful, more urban and will include more women,” as a result of the added mixed events.
IAAF President Sebastian Coe has supported the event’s addition by the IOC, But it won’t come without its challenges after the subsequent announcement that track and field will lose 105 entries from previous years in 2020. That means each country’s relay pool will be smaller.
Though the full impact of the event is still to be determined, the U.S.’s gold and two world record runs in Doha have made Beard an endorser.
“If it feels this good at the world stage, I can only imagine this at the Olympic stage,” she said.
