In part 1, we looked at the three most popular methods for designing relay courses, and in this instalment we’ll look at sprint relays.

Sprint Relays

According to the IOF competition format guidelines:

1. The Sprint Relay profile is mixed-gender high-speed head-to-head competition. It takes place in an urban and park environment. The format is a combination of the Sprint and Relay concepts. There are four legs and the first and last legs must be run by women.
2. The winning time (the total time for the winning team) must be 55-60 minutes. The time for each leg must be 12-15 minutes so the first and last legs (which are run by women) should be a little shorter than the second and third legs.

The following examples are schematic outlines of the women’s and men’s courses from the WOC 2022 Sprint Relay (distances shown are approximate and maps for both courses are available from the WOC 2022 website).

This article from John was published in the Oct 2009 edition of O-Know.  Although a well discussed topic I thought it worth including to reinforce the importance of this issue.

In both qualifying heats for the World Masters long distance event, complaints were lodged with the organisers regarding some controls which were placed very close to each other.  One went to a protest but that was dismissed on technical grounds.  Two top Australian women competitors made mistakes by punching the wrong controls.  As a result they could only then compete unofficially in their remaining final races.  I must emphasise that it is the runners responsibility to check the control numbers, but in the heat of big races that can be overlooked or maybe misread.  That is an understandable explanation – but is not an excuse.