>It seems like a no-brainer to me, >so please clue me in as to why four >elite females don't get together for a meet and >break an american and world record?
Sorry to have been quiet on this subject so far but being based in the UK I only choose to receive the digest. As a British Milers' Club (BMC) race organiser about ten years ago, I did the same as Paul Nisius and looked at these relay records, and thought "We'll have some of that". Accordingly the BMC held a number of relay meetings from 1993 to 2000 over different relay distances, and in 1997 we held a women's 4x1500 where one of our teams set a time of 17:41.0. Believe me it is much much harder than you would think to get a team to set a decent time. The real problem is that after the first leg it becomes a time trial, and in general terms athletes in a 4x1500 relay and leading the race tend to run between 5 and 10 seconds slower than their current 1500 form. Very noticeable too that the 5k runners tend to perform more to expectations than the 800m runners and that you only get decent times when there is meaningful competition on each leg. Our final relay meeting was held in Battersea Park, London on 25th June 2000, where the current world-best was set. The key to the success was Sonia O'Sullivan, who ran for the Irish team that came second, and whose partner Nick Bideau was the manager of an Australian group of athletes based in London. Even though we had a few weeks to get it arranged, try as we might, we could not get a British team to challenge them despite the meeting being in late June. And of course a British team could have included four from Kelly Holmes, Paula Radcliffe, Hayley Tullett, Helen Pattinson and Jo Pavey. However, Kelly was out of the country and Jo was injured and for the others it just didn't fit with any of their schedules. We had a generous sponsor as well, so money was not an issue. The simple fact is that, in the UK, racing opportunities are sufficiently few and far between that if you could get all of the top British women to the start line, they would want to race each other in a straight 1,500m to try to get a fast time. However, we did set a series of British Junior records over the various distances that still stand to this day. I stopped organising race meetings a few years ago, and I now work for Athletics Weekly, a British publication which we think is the last remaining weekly track and field magazine in the world. Most of the staff here subscribe to the list, and we are planning to start contributing to the list in the weeks and months to come. I am still vice-chairman of the BMC, and, on behalf of the BMC and in our 40th year, we wish all of you over there the best of luck in breaking the "world-best" set by Australia, and if you succeed, the BMC will try to win it back again! Matthew Fraser Moat
