WRE Guangzhou 25 preview: clash of global medallists in women's 4x100m

Image:  Francesca Grana for World Athletics

USA broke a 10-year-old championship record when winning the women’s 4x100m at last year’s World Athletics Relays and went on to clinch the Olympic crown in Paris ahead of Great Britain and Germany.

Now, with places at the World Athletics Championships Tokyo 25 up for grabs, those Olympic medal-winners are among the 20 federations contesting the women’s 4x100m at the World Athletics Relays Guangzhou 25 on 10-11 May.

A clash of global medallists wouldn’t be complete without Jamaica, whose fifth-place finish in Paris was the first time since 2008 that the nation had not featured on the Olympic podium. A squad starring two-time world 200m champion Shericka Jackson will be looking to make a statement in Guangzhou.

After finishing fifth in the 100m final, Twanisha Terry ran the second leg as part of USA’s gold medal-winning 4x100m quartet at the Paris Olympics and the 26-year-old makes her World Relays debut in Guangzhou. That Olympic title was Terry’s third consecutive global 4x100m gold after USA’s wins at the World Championships in Oregon in 2022 and Budapest in 2023.

This time her teammates include 2022 world indoor 60m silver medallist Mikiah Brisco, who raced on USA’s victorious team at the 2019 World Relays, and Cambrea Sturgis, the 2021 double NCAA champion.

USA and Jamaica have filled the top two spots at three of the past four global championships and Jamaica will want to resume that tradition at the World Championships in Tokyo in September. The top 14 teams in Guangzhou will automatically qualify for Tokyo, the city in which Jamaica claimed Olympic gold in 2021.

Jackson anchored Jamaica to that Olympic triumph, but injury denied her the chance to compete at last year’s Games in Paris. She returned to competition in March and most recently finished second in the 200m at the Diamond League in Xiamen.

She is the sole member of that Olympic final-winning quartet listed for the women’s 4x100m in Guangzhou, but she is joined in the squad again by Natasha Morrison, who ran in the heats in Tokyo and helped to secure silver at the 2023 World Championships. Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the 16-time world medallist, has been named for the mixed 4x100m in Guangzhou, although it is in the rules of the event that any athlete named in any discipline can be drafted into the squad for another discipline.

Alana Reid and Olympic 100m finalist Tia Clayton, who helped Jamaica to finish fifth at the Paris Olympics, are also among the entries.

Three members of Great Britain & Northern Ireland’s Paris Olympics squad have been selected for Guangzhou. Amy Hunt, who ran the third leg in the heats and final, is joined by her heat teammates Desiree Henry and Bianca Williams, plus five-time global 4x100m medallist Asha Philip.

Germany’s Olympic bronze medallists Lisa Mayer and Rebekka Haase, who ran in the final in Paris, and their teammate Sophia Junk, who joined them in the heats, are all in action, while Chloe Galet and Helene Parisot – who were in the French team that finished runner-up to USA in the final at last year’s World Relays before finishing fourth at the home Olympics – feature in the squad again.

The world lead of 41.74 was achieved by a US quartet in Austin in March, while Canada’s Sade McCreath, Marie-Eloise Leclair, Audrey Leduc and Catherine Leger combined to clock 42.73 in Baton Rouge last month and they are all set for Guangzhou.

World indoor 60m finalist Liang Xiaojing and Ge Manqi, who helped China to sixth place in the Tokyo Olympic 4x100m final, both return to World Relays action for the host federation.

Other teams targeting a place in the final – or at least a top 14 spot to earn World Championships qualification – include African champions Nigeria, whose squad stars Favour Ofili who has already run 10.99 for 100m this season, plus Olympic finalists Netherlands and Switzerland, Liberia, Australia and Italy.

Story: Jess Whittington for World Athletics