If the United States is going to win the most gold medals three years from now at the LA Olympics, there's a good chance the U.S. track relay teams will play a big part in that.
If this year's world championships are any sign of what's to come, then give the U.S. a better-than-average chance.
USA Track and Field overhauled its struggling relay strategy to start this Olympic cycle and won four of five possible gold medals at the world championships in Tokyo
last month. Anchors in three of the wins were Sha'Carri Richardson, Noah Lyles and Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone.
It marked only the second time over the past 10 years that both the men's and women's 4x100 teams won gold at the same major championship — worlds or Olympics.
“We always have great talent, but do we have the culture in place to allow the talent to achieve what they're capable of?" said Robert Chapman, the USA Track and Field chief of high performance operations. “I feel we took a solid, positive step to nailing that process and getting that established.”
The most notable difference comes in the way the relay team is selected. For last year's Olympics, USATF had a list of no fewer than eight people who had input into the makeup of the team. For 2025, that list was pared down to two general managers — former U.S. sprinter Wallace Spearmon and distance runner Amy Begley.
“There's always been involvement by a high-performance committee and we've had contractor coaches” making decisions, Chapman said. “It wasn't exactly straightforward. We tried to reorganize and restructure how we do relays.”
That, in turn, kept the coaches out of politics about team make-up and allowed them to “focus on fundamentals of what really matters, like passing the baton," Chapman said.
The old way was pocked with questionable decisions, many of which appeared steeped in politics that nobody quite understood. Last year, the men's 4x100 team extended a streak without an Olympic medal to 20 years (They finished second in 2012, only to have that medal stripped for a doping violation.)
Even with this year's success, bad exchanges have cost the U.S. men in seven worlds and six Olympics since 1995.
Before last year's failure, one of the system's biggest critics, two-time Olympic relay champion Carl Lewis, told The Associated Press: “The issue has always been politics, has always been drama, has always been deception. If they can eliminate those things, there’s no question they have the fastest team in the world.”
On a rainy final night of action in Tokyo, the U.S. proved that, winning three of the four relays. The only loss came in the men's 4x400 to Botswana, a burgeoning relay power that featured the newly crowned 400-meter champion (Collen Kebinatshipi) and the Olympic 200-meter champion (Letsile Tebogo).
The women's 4x100 team extended its own streak in majors to four straight. The first was an upset over Jamaica, which had baton troubles of its own in 2022. The last three have featured Richardson on the anchor leg.
The U.S. kept that lineup this year, even though Richardson had struggled this season and Melissa Jefferson-Wooden won gold in the 100 and 200.
Spearmon said the lineups for both qualifying and finals were set well before the championships began, in what he portrayed as an important change.
“We sent out depth charts so people knew exactly where they would run,” he said. “We made sure athletes weren't competing for a spot in the final. We said, ‘This is the order, this is your job, you handle your job and if you don’t like your job, then don't get on the plane.'”
Spearmon called the overhaul a “culture change” that produced the least amount of drama he's seen since he's been involved in the sprint program, dating to the mid 2000s.
Now, the question becomes whether this is a true fix.
In relays, among the most fickle of track and field's events, it's often hard to know. Even with this year's success, the team that has won the most overall medals in track for decades has missed out on gold in 17 of 41 major relays since 2015.
There will be six available in LA — two each in men's, women's and mixed, where the 4x100 is being added to the program for 2028.
“Outcomes matter,” Chapman said. “But at the beginning of the quad, we wanted to focus on the process. If we nailed the process and dropped the stick or got beat, then I'm OK with that. But if we win and have a messed-up process, then we're not making progress on what we need to do for '28.”
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