Guangzhou 2025, the second day of the World Athletics Relays in China, an overview

The timing, location and rules of the competition reduced the World Relays to a qualifying competition for the relays at the World Championships to be held in Tokyo in September. In theory the World Relays should be the premier relay competition in the sport but for the reasons listed above its place in the packing order is well behind the Olympics and the World Championships – and for European athletes arguably behind the European Championships. The World Athletics offers $40,000 to winning teams makes it a decent payday for successful athletes. That a significant proportion of the world’s top athletes were not in China confirms this impression.

That said it was an exciting and very watchable weekend of action with cut and thrust in every event, the drama of dropped batons and faulty changeovers. It was interesting to see a mixed 4X100 for the first time on to note predictable problems as teams struggled with the woman to man changeover.

The BBC TV commentators – not athletics specialists – kept talking about athletes booking their tickets for Tokyo – teams yes, athletes no.  Many of the second string athletes performed well to get qualify their teams will be replaced by first choice athletes in September

The six winners were South Africa twice, Canada, Great Britain, Spain and USA once each. South Africa’s victory in the men’s 4X100 was a mystery as the race was stopped for a false start, with South Africa being shown by the technology to have beaten the clock yet the next thing we saw was an official holding up a green card.

The medals went to 10 countries. South Africa topped the table with two golds, USA and South Africa were equal top on number of medals  with three. The continental breakdown was  Europe, Africa and North America 5 each, 2 for the Caribbean and 1 for Australia. Hosts China made two finals but were not in the medals.

Spain’s women taking gold and silver was an unexpected achievement. Flash quotes are often bland and clichéed but you can almost hear the excitement of the Spanish 4X400 gold-medallists: Blanca Hervas “Myself and all of them never felt like this before. We are crazy excited – gold medal, world relays champion, national record, everything – my biggest dream, I am so thankful. To our coaches, to our families, thank you for everything. This is their medal, too, coaches, families, friends, everyone.”