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The most unlikely athletes to have taken part in a relay
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World Athletics championships have seen some random athletes carry a baton. Here are five of the least likely relay runners. Starring: Ruth Beitia, Sally Pearson, Allen Johnson, Erik Sowinski and a cameo from Barbara Spotakova! • Music • Thanks to David Woodgett. Intro: Weight in Gold, available on Spotify. Outro, You Wanna Lift, I Gotta Ride on Spotify and here: • You Wanna Lift, I Gotta Ride • Please check out his other songs here: / sigurdav100 • Image credits • Pearson: Paul Harding/PA Archive/PA Images • Johnson: David Davies/PA Archive/PA Images • Spotakova: Dave Thompson/PA Archive/PA Images • Richards: John Walton/PA Archive/PA Images • ABC News clipping: REUTERS/Suzanne Plunkett • Michael Johnson: John Giles/PA Archive/PA Images • Beitia: Paul Harding/PA Archive/PA Images • Relay start: Martin Rickett/PA Archive/PA Images • Partial script • We’ve all been there. Whether it be you’re needing a player for five-a-side, you have a spare ticket for a concert, or need someone to play in part in a play - there are situations in life that have you desperately scrolling through your contacts in search of someone, anyone, to step up and be a hero. Athletics is no different and last minute injury has led to some very unlikely athletes needing to take one for the team. • We have seen this in team competitions where to score a point athletes have taken part in an event that is not their own - such as Barbara Spotakova throwing a shot put at the European Team Championships for the Czech Republic. • More commonly though, we see this when one runner is no longer able to make a relay. A relay consists of four runners so one of them being unable to compete at the last minute is fairly common - but for this reason World Athletics does allow countries to select from a pool. • But there are occasions when, for whatever reason, a country is forced to choose an athlete from a completely different event...And then force them to run up to 400m. I’m not talking about Jareem ‘The Dream’ Richards stepping up from 200m. Or Athing Mu coming down from 800m. I’m talking about Sally bloody Pearson running a 4x400m relay. • Ten years since Cathy Freeman won the Olympic title, 400m running had apparently dipped in Australia to the point where a 100m hurdler was not only given a lane but given the anchor leg. • To be fair, Sally was the athlete of these championships winning both the hurdles and the flat 100m. This was an unusual championship, held in October for one thing. And true to form this played out in strange fashion. Pearson held third on the final lap but was overtaken by the English and then Canadian teams in the final straight. And, of course, this being the Delhi championships the result was of course not final and after Nigeria were disqualified, Australia were bumped up to fourth - which meant that Sally Pearson was only a tenth away from a 400m medal. • Speaking of hurdlers stepping up… One of the great 4x400m relays in recent history pitted a classy Jamaican team, against one of the best ever British quartets, against an American team without Johnson. Michael Johnson, that was… But the team did contain Allen Johnson! • That’s right. The greatest 110m hurdle runner bar none represented his country in the heats of the 1997 Athens World Championships, taking the anchor leg no less. • Michael Johnson was the individual champion in 1997 but did not contest the relay, effectively handing the baton....Sorry... To his namesake to compete in the rounds. There is unfortunately no surviving clip of this race, but according to World Athletics he clocked an impressive 46.40 seconds. As well as being Olympic and multiple world champion over his preferred distance, Johnson long jumped 8.14m and high jumped 2.11m. And reports even suggest that Johnson made those 46 seconds look easy. • In 2021, Erik Sowkinski had a packed summer of competing and pacemaking middle distance races. But on 25 August, Sowinski found himself alongside Isiah Young, Marvin Bracey, and Mike Rodgers as the most unlikely of anchors for a 4x100m team. This was a bronze continental meeting in Hungary. However it happened, the team ran a sub-41 second race - making Sowinski one of few men in history to have a 4x1 PB and also a world class 800m time. • After running in the 100m heats, Tsimanouskaya recorded an Instagram post saying she had been forced into the relay at the distance she had never run before. She left the team. But it did leave a spot on the Belarussian team that needed to be filled by someone. That spot went to…Elvira Herman. • Ruth Beitia competing for the Spanish in Deagu 2011 was the second biggest mystery of the championships, behind how a Jamaican team containing Shelly-Anne Fraser Pryce, Kerron Stewart, Sherone Simpson and Vero Campbell-Brown were beaten.
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