The 2025 Tokyo World Athletics Championships delivered the usual buffet of standout performances, photo‑finishes, and medal‑table chest‑thumping. And now, in a delightful post‑script, we have a new “unexpected result” — not from the track, but from the lab. A fresh study has dropped on what actually makes a 4 x 100m relay team successful. Spoiler: it’s the baton. More specifically, how fast the baton keeps moving while four sprinters attempt not to fumble it.
The research, led by Takeo Matsubayashi of the Japan Institute of Sports Sciences in collaboration with the World Athletics Health and Science department, examined the usual suspects: individual sprint ability, baton‑exchange mechanics, and how teams behave when the pressure of a global championship squeezes out their best — or worst — habits.
Beyond sprint speed 💨
— World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) July 22, 2026
Research conducted at the #WorldAthleticsChamps Tokyo 25 shows that maintaining baton velocity during exchanges can have a significant impact on relay outcomes.
More info 🔗 https://t.co/kvK5qIQPdY pic.twitter.com/iAUWQwXIM6
High‑speed cameras ringed the track during the relay finals, capturing every twitch and stutter. From that, researchers reconstructed the athletes’ positions in three dimensions, allowing them to see precisely what happened as the baton changed hands — the moment where races are won, lost, or catastrophically dropped.
They analyzed takeover‑zone time, minimum baton velocity, the exact passing position, and the duration of each exchange. Then they compared all of it to finishing times. The results were not subtle. Teams bled time in the exchanges, enough to swing the outcome. The most effective squads were those that kept baton velocity high by minimizing the incoming runner’s deceleration and giving the outgoing runner enough runway to accelerate before the handover. In other words: don’t slow down, don’t panic, and don’t treat the exchange like a polite handoff at a family picnic.
This will inevitably put more pressure on athletes to execute cleaner, faster, near‑full‑flight exchanges. Teams with chronic relay issues — Team USA comes to mind, with its long history of turning the 4 x 100m into performance art — may want to schedule a few extra practice sessions.
The study also punctured the long‑held belief that individual sprinting ability alone determines relay success. Rankings based on each team’s average 100m season’s bests didn’t match the finishing order. Relay performance, it turns out, is not simply four fast people running in sequence. The baton exchange, that tiny sliver of time, is a decisive, relay‑specific skill.
“A central finding of this study is the importance of maintaining baton velocity throughout the exchange,” Matsubayashi said. “This depends not only on a smooth handover, but also on how well the incoming runner maintains speed and how effectively the outgoing runner accelerates before receiving the baton.” In other words, the baton is the fifth athlete, and it needs to be treated accordingly.
Japan’s short sprints head coach, Sakie Nobuoka, noted that the findings simply quantify what coaches have known intuitively for years. “The goal is not only to pass the baton safely and smoothly, but also to carry speed through the exchange,” she said. Now, coaches have numbers to back up the instinct.
For teams that master this, records will fall — and for once, not because of carbon plates, exotic foams, or questionable supplements. A tactical shift in relay execution could make the event more intriguing, more technical, and more honest.
Beyond describing what happened in Tokyo, the study gives coaches and athletes a practical, evidence‑based framework for refining technique, improving coordination, and preparing exchanges with objective criteria rather than superstition or tradition. In a discipline where hundredths matter, baton velocity may be the next frontier.
