Will running ever introduce mixed gender relays?

At the swimming World Championships this year in Kazan, Russia, there were mixed medley and mixed freestyle relay races, with each team featuring two male and two female athletes from the same country.

This sparks the question: will we ever see this dynamic kind of racing on the track?

Swimming, like running, is generally not known to be one of the most popular of spectator sports, which may explain the sport’s governing body’s decision to introduce mixed relays. They’re dramatic, entertaining and a surefire way to get a crowd going.

Mixed gender relays make for exciting shifts in leaders as well as provide the opportunity for coaches to make psychologically strategic decisions based on how their own athletes operate. Do their athletes perform better when they feel as though they’re widening a lead, or are they best when they feel intense pressure to catch someone in front of them?

Many swimmers have also offered their support for the events, highlighting that it spotlights male and female athletes as being equally important.

It’s not a huge stretch to imagine mixed gender races on the track. Such a thing already exists in distance running, notably the international Chiba Ekiden race, which has been co-ed since 2007. However, in the Chiba Ekiden, the female team members run a shorter distance than their male counterparts, a gender-inequality phenomenon that seems rampant in running. The Chiba Ekiden race was not run this year however, due to inability to recruit top talent from some countries. This was unfortunate for Canada, who has sent many of its top runners in the past years, including Lanni Marchant, Jessica O’Connell, Lucas Bruchet and Natasha Labeaud.