Home » Latest » Trending Sports » USA dominates in first mixed 4×400 relay, Allyson Felix breaks Usain Bolt’s record | NBC Sports

USA dominates in first mixed 4×400 relay, Allyson Felix breaks Usain Bolt’s record | NBC Sports

2

InfoSearched 81 0 Trending Sports

8.2

SaveSavedRemoved 1

Allyson Felix just made Olympic and world championship history all in one 400-meter leg.

On the final Sunday night of the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha, Qatar, the United States didn’t just win the inaugural mixed 4×400-meter relay — it turned the new event into a coronation. Team USA ran a world-record time behind a golden middle leg from 33-year-old Allyson Felix, who used the run to pass Usain Bolt on the all-time list of world championship gold medals. Jamaica took silver and Bahrain claimed bronze in the event’s debut on this stage.

• The U.S. quartet of Wilbert London, Allyson Felix, Courtney Okolo and anchor Michael Cherry set a world record in the newly introduced mixed 4x400m relay, with Jamaica taking silver and Bahrain bronze.
• Felix’s 50.4-second second leg delivered her 12th career world championship gold medal, officially surpassing Usain Bolt’s 11 and pushing her total world championship medal count to 17.
• It marked Felix’s first major championship gold since giving birth to daughter Camryn in November 2018 via emergency C-section at 32 weeks due to severe preeclampsia — she competed in Doha just ten months postpartum as a relay pool runner.

A New Event Debuts in Doha

The mixed 4x400m relay was added to the World Athletics Championships program for the first time in 2019, sending two men and two women from each nation around the track in a single race — a format built partly to push gender parity in the sport. The U.S. treated the debut like any other final it intended to win, running London first, handing off to Felix, then Okolo, before Cherry closed it out on the anchor leg.

Felix’s 50.4-second split put the Americans in control heading into the final exchange, and Cherry brought it home for the world record. The result extended a run of American dominance in relay competition that already includes more than 100 combined Olympic and World Championship relay medals across the program’s history — the mixed event simply gave that depth chart a new place to show itself.

Felix Passes Bolt on the All-Time List

The gold was Felix’s 12th at a world championship, one more than the 11 collected by Bolt during his career, making her the most decorated athlete in the history of the World Athletics Championships. Combined with her Olympic medal haul, it also pushed her total world championship medal count — golds, silvers and bronzes together — to 17.

“It is very special. I was just so honored to be part of such a great team, they did such a fantastic job. We knew it would be tough, but we just kept fighting.” — Allyson Felix

London, Okolo and Cherry each ran their legs with clean baton exchanges and no wasted motion, giving Felix a lead she never had to fight from behind to protect. It was the kind of relay execution that has made the program a fixture at the top of the medal table, and it happened to arrive in the exact race where Felix’s name moved past Bolt’s.

Ten Months Removed From an Emergency Delivery

What made the medal count personal was the path back to it. Felix gave birth to her daughter, Camryn, in November 2018 after an emergency C-section at 32 weeks brought on by severe preeclampsia — a serious complication that put both mother and daughter at risk. Ten months later, she was back on a global final start line in Doha, running as part of the relay pool rather than in an individual final.

Felix’s reaction on social media after the race was a single word: “Humbled.” For a six-time Olympic gold medalist who has built her career on individual sprint finals, winning this particular gold as a relay leg — after a pregnancy that nearly sidelined her for good — carried a different weight than her previous eleven.

The mixed relay’s debut and the record-setting run gave the sport a new event worth watching in Tokyo, where it’s set to appear on the Olympic program for the first time in 2020 — and where Felix, now with 17 world championship medals to her name, will look to add an Olympic chapter to the comeback that started in Doha.