WATCH: Duke relay runner drops baton at finish line, team loses ACC title

The Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Indoor Championships were held in Lousiville, Ky., from Thursday to Saturday, and athletes saved the most dramatic finish of the weekend for the last day of competition. The women’s 4 x 400m relay featured a thrilling final sprint that saw Duke University’s Megan McGinnis cross the line in first, but a dropped baton just feet from the finish resulted in her team’s disqualification. 

Duke had the lead after the first couple of hand-offs in the race, but the University of Miami women were never far behind. Miami made the pass at the end of the penultimate lap, but McGinnis charged ahead after receiving the baton and immediately reclaimed the lead.

Miami’s Sanaa Hebron managed to keep McGinnis within reach over the first 300m of the final leg. Hebron made her move on the final turn, almost drawing even with McGinnis, but she fell just short, missing out on the win by mere inches. While McGinnis won the race to the line, in the closing metres, her arm swung over into the next lane and Hebron inadvertently knocked the baton out of her hand. 

McGinnis realized immediately that her team’s race may have been in jeopardy, and she crouched near the finish waiting desperately to find out what the verdict was. She and her teammates were eventually informed that the dropped baton was deemed to be her fault, and they were therefore disqualified. 

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— Duke Track & Field and Cross Country (@DukeTFXC) February 24, 2023

As the race commentators noted, if McGinnis had stopped to pick up the baton and crossed the finish line with it, they might still have clinched the title, but in the moment, that didn’t seem to cross her mind. To make matters worse, the Duke women ended up losing the overall team title by just two points to Virginia Tech. The win in the 4 x 400m relay would have earned Duke the ACC title, which would have been the first outright indoor championship in program history (Duke shared the ACC crown with Virginia Tech after a tie in 2022). 

Perhaps something of a consolation for McGinnis is the fact that she and her Duke teammates won the distance medley relay (DMR) earlier in the championships. Their final time of 10:49.87 is an ACC record. 

For full results from the ACC Indoor Championships, click here.