Explainer
Relay changeover rules: why the exchange zone decides it
How relay changeovers work: the 30-metre zone, blind and visual exchanges, the go-mark, dropped batons and the lane rules that disqualify most teams.
By CricketTaken EditorialPublished Explainer22 min read
Four sprinters, one hollow tube and about four and a half seconds of genuine danger. Everything else in a 4x100 metres relay is ordinary sprinting, done by people who do it for a living. The event is decided in three short strips of track where two athletes have to occupy the same lane at the same time, one of them travelling flat out and looking forwards, the other accelerating away from a piece of metal he is not allowed to look at.
The relay changeover rules in athletics are short enough to read over a cup of tea and strict enough that a team can run the fastest time in the field, cross the line first, and be taken out of the results before it has finished celebrating. Almost nobody who watches the sport casually can say where the zone starts, what part of the athlete has to be inside it, or whether a dropped baton ends the race. The answers are all more precise, and in one case considerably more forgiving, than the folklore suggests.
Start with the geometry, because every argument about a changeover is finally an argument about a painted line.
The relay changeover rules start with a 30-metre zone, and only the baton counts
A relay track is marked with scratch lines: 50mm-wide lines drawn across the track at the end of each leg distance. Those are not the zone. They are the reference point the zone is measured from, and the measurement is not symmetrical.
In the 4x100m and the 4x200m, and for the first and second changes of the medley relay, the takeover zone is 30 metres long, with the scratch line 20 metres from the beginning of the zone. Read that again, because it is the detail most descriptions get wrong: the zone opens 20 metres before the scratch line and closes 10 metres after it. Two thirds of the working space is behind the line, which is exactly where you would put it if you understood that the outgoing runner has to get moving before the baton arrives.
In the 4x400m and longer relays, and for the third change of the medley, the zone is 20 metres long and the scratch line sits at its centre. Ten metres either side. Symmetrical, because the outgoing runner in those events is not trying to reach full speed before contact.
The zones start and finish at the edges of the zone lines nearest the start line in the running direction. That is a 50mm distinction and it has decided real protests. At the beginning of the zone the whole width of the painted line is inside; at the end of the zone the painted line is outside. A baton over the far line is late, not marginal.
Now the part that surprises people. In relation to the takeover zone, it is only the position of the baton that is decisive, and it is the whole baton that must be considered. Not the feet. Not the shoulders. Two runners can be standing well outside the zone with the baton inside it and the exchange is legal, and two runners can be entirely inside the zone with the baton over the line and the team is out.
The pass has two moments, and both have to happen inside the strip. It commences when the baton is first touched by the receiving athlete, and it is completed the moment the baton is in the hand of only the receiving athlete. So the receiver may not lay a finger on it before it has entered the zone, and the incoming runner must have let go of it before it leaves. A pass that starts legally and finishes late is a disqualification. So is a pass that starts early and finishes inside.
There is one further constraint that does involve the athletes' bodies rather than the baton. The outgoing runner must not begin running outside the zone, and their feet have to be completely inside the zone before they start the movement that ends with them taking the baton. A runner who rolls forward out of the front of the zone, spots the problem and steps back in has already broken the rule, because the movement began outside it. This is what the official standing at each zone is checking before the field arrives.
The acceleration zone was abolished, and most people never noticed
Anyone who learned the event more than a few years ago learned it with two zones. There was a 10-metre acceleration zone, in which the outgoing runner could start running but not receive, followed by a 20-metre passing zone, in which the baton had to change hands. Three lines, two rules, and a permanent source of confusion for everybody involved.
World Athletics merged them into a single 30-metre takeover zone in the rules revision that came into force for the 2018 season. The dimensions did not move: the outer edges of the old arrangement and the new one sit in the same place, 20 metres before the scratch line and 10 metres after it. What changed is that the baton may now legally change hands anywhere across the whole 30 metres, including in the first 10, which used to be forbidden ground.
The practical effect is smaller than it sounds for elite teams and larger than it sounds for everyone else. A world-class quartet is not passing the baton in the first ten metres of the zone, because a receiver who takes it that early is taking it slowly, and the entire point of the exercise is to hand it over at speed. What the merge really did was remove a category of disqualification that punished mistakes nobody was making on purpose. Under the old rules, an outgoing runner who mistimed his start and got caught early was disqualified for an offence that cost his team time anyway. Now the same error simply produces a slow, safe exchange and a worse result, which is punishment enough.
It also cut the officiating burden. One zone means one set of lines, one judgement, and umpires who are watching a single boundary at each end rather than deciding which of two rules a given contact fell under.
If you coach at school or club level, check the rulebook actually in force for your competition. National federations, masters bodies and school associations do not all update in step with World Athletics, and some domestic rulebooks have historically kept a separate acceleration zone or different zone lengths for younger age groups. The World Athletics numbers are the international standard. They are not automatically the numbers painted on your local track.
Why the 4x100 is run blind and the 4x400 refuses to be
A blind exchange, more properly a non-visual exchange, means the outgoing runner never looks at the baton. He starts on a mark, runs away at maximum effort, puts a hand back when he hears a call, and holds it still until something hard lands in it. He finds out whether the exchange has worked by feel.
Every part of that is uncomfortable and all of it is necessary at 4x100 speeds.
Turning the head costs speed. A sprinter at full tilt who looks over his shoulder shortens his stride, breaks the rhythm of the arms and loses a fraction of the acceleration he was sent to build. It costs more than the time it takes, because the loss compounds over the remaining metres of the leg.
Turning the head also moves the target. The hand is attached to the shoulder, the shoulder to the trunk, and the trunk rotates when the head does. A receiver who looks back has just made his own hand a moving object at exactly the moment the incoming runner is aiming at it. The stillness of the receiving hand is the whole ask, and looking destroys it.
And the receiver has nothing useful to do with the information. He cannot slow down to help; slowing down is what the system is designed to prevent. He cannot reach backwards further; his arm is already extended. Seeing the baton two metres behind him would tell him only that he has a problem he cannot solve.
The 4x400m goes the other way for reasons just as sound. The incoming runner has just run 400 metres and is arriving in a state that no mark can predict. He might be closing at a good clip or he might be falling apart in the last twenty metres, and the difference between those two is worth several metres of go-mark. A blind exchange calibrated on a fresh runner is worthless against a fading one.
So the 4x400 exchange is visual. The outgoing runner stands in the zone, watches his team-mate come, judges the closing speed, turns and begins to move as the arrival demands, takes the baton with his eyes on it and only then goes. It is slower by design. It is also nearly unbreakable, which is why 4x400 disqualifications tend to come from lane and position offences rather than from the pass itself.
The 4x200m sits between the two and is coached both ways depending on the standard of the athletes and on how much of the race is being run in lanes.
Upsweep, downsweep and push: three answers to one problem
All three methods are trying to buy the same thing. It is called free distance, and it is the gap between the incoming runner's hand and the receiving runner's hand at the moment of transfer.
Free distance matters because the baton travels 400 metres and the runners do not have to. Every centimetre between the two hands at the exchange is ground the baton crosses without anybody running it. Multiply by three exchanges and a team with long, confident, fully extended exchanges has effectively shortened the race for its four athletes compared with a team that shuffles the baton over at half an arm's length. This is one of the few places in sprinting where technique buys distance rather than speed.
The upsweep. The receiver's arm goes back with the palm facing downwards and slightly back, hand around hip height, thumb out to form a V with the fingers. The incoming runner brings the baton up into that V from below. It is the most natural hand position to hold still under fatigue, which is why it is taught first, and the reason it is not universal at the top level is that the receiver ends up gripping the low end of the baton. Each exchange consumes a little more of the tube, so after two or three changes there is less to grab, and the runner has to walk the baton up through the fingers as he runs, which is precisely the fiddling nobody wants at eleven metres per second.
The downsweep. The receiver's arm goes back with the palm facing upwards and open, hand higher, and the incoming runner places the baton down into it. The receiver takes the upper end, so the baton migrates the other way through the hand across successive exchanges. It offers a slightly larger visible target for the incoming runner and a slightly less stable one for the receiver, because holding a supinated hand steady at full sprint is harder than holding a pronated one.
The push pass. The receiver's arm is extended straight back, roughly parallel to the ground, hand open with the thumb pointing down and the palm turned towards the incoming runner. The baton is pushed straight into the gap between thumb and fingers, in the line of running rather than up or down into it. This gives the greatest free distance of the three, because both arms are fully extended along the same axis, and it is the least forgiving, because the target is a vertical plane rather than a cupped hand and there is no palm underneath to catch a poor delivery.
There is no correct answer, only a correct answer for a specific pair of athletes under championship pressure. The method a squad uses in a final is the one it can repeat when tired, in front of a full stadium, with a team-mate it may only have run with a handful of times.
One rule constrains all of them. The baton must be carried by hand throughout the race, and athletes are not permitted to wear gloves or to put material or substances on their hands to improve the grip. A sweaty hand in cold rain is a genuine hazard and the rules offer no help with it.
The alternation of hands is geometry, not preference. In the standard arrangement the first runner carries in the right hand and runs the bend tight to the inside of the lane, so the baton is on the outside of the lane and away from the line. He passes to the second runner's left hand. That runner takes the back straight on the outer side of the lane and passes to the third runner's right hand, who runs the second bend on the inside, and hands to the fourth runner's left. Nobody switches hands. Every switch is a chance to drop it, and the pattern also keeps the two runners on opposite sides of a 1.22-metre lane during the exchange, which is the only reason two people can be in it at once without a collision.
The go-mark is the whole event compressed into one strip of tape
The rules permit each athlete one check-mark on the track within their own lane, made of adhesive tape no larger than 0.05m by 0.40m, in a distinctive colour that cannot be confused with the permanent markings. One mark. No other check-mark may be used, and judges will direct an athlete to remove anything that does not comply, then remove it themselves if the athlete does not.
That single piece of tape is where the outgoing runner's attention is until the moment he goes. He stands in the zone, half-turned, watching a point on the track behind him. When the incoming runner's leading foot lands on or crosses the mark, he goes, and from that instant he is running a 30-metre acceleration with his eyes forward and no further decisions to make.
The whole design of the exchange is to reduce a moving-target problem to a single binary trigger. Everything difficult has been pushed back into training, where there is time to solve it.
Constructed arithmetic on invented round numbers, not measured data. The incoming runner is assumed to hold a constant 10 metres per second, which no real runner does at the end of a leg, and the outgoing runner is assumed to accelerate uniformly at 4 metres per second squared from a standing start. The go-mark is set so that the two are 14 metres apart at the instant the outgoing runner leaves. Gap in metres.
Show the numbers
| Item | Gap between the two runners |
|---|---|
| 0.0s | 14 |
| 0.5s | 9.5 |
| 1.0s | 6 |
| 1.5s | 3.5 |
| 2.0s | 2 |
| 2.5s | 1.5 |
| 3.0s | 2 |
Read the shape of that invented example rather than the numbers. The gap shrinks fast, then slows, reaches a minimum, then starts to open again. The minimum is the exchange. It arrives at the moment the outgoing runner's speed matches the incoming runner's, and it lasts for a fraction of a second, because immediately afterwards the outgoing runner is the faster of the two and pulling away.
Two things follow, and they are the reasons changeovers go wrong.
The first is that the window is defined by speed matching, not by distance. If the incoming runner is a metre per second slower than the calibration assumed, the minimum gap arrives later, further down the track, and possibly past the end of the zone. If he is faster, the gap closes early, the baton arrives while the receiver is still accelerating, and either the receiver has to check his stride or the incoming runner runs up his back.
The second is that a go-mark is a property of a pair of athletes, not of one. It encodes the incoming runner's speed at the end of his leg and the outgoing runner's acceleration profile from a standing start, together. Change either athlete and the number is wrong. This is why relay squads are built around pairings rather than individuals, and why a substitution between rounds is a bigger deal than it looks from the stands.
Setting the mark is unglamorous and entirely empirical. A pair runs the exchange at full intensity, an eye at the zone reports where the baton actually changed hands, the mark moves a foot-length or two, and they run it again. Coaches measure in foot-lengths rather than in metres because a foot-length is a unit the athlete can pace out himself on an unfamiliar track. The mark then has to be adjusted for the conditions on the day: a headwind on the incoming leg, a slow surface, a runner in his third round of a championship in four days, a cold evening where nobody is quite reaching the speeds they hit in training.
The mark is also a confidence instrument. An outgoing runner who does not trust it hesitates, and hesitation is worse than a wrong mark. Half a step of doubt at the start of the acceleration is not recoverable inside 30 metres.
Relay changeover rules on a dropped baton are more forgiving than they look
Ask a crowd what happens when a baton hits the track and most of them will say the team is out. The rules say something quite different, and the difference is worth knowing because it changes what a runner should do in the two seconds after it happens.
If dropped, the baton must be recovered by the athlete who dropped it. That athlete may leave their lane to retrieve it, provided that by doing so they do not lessen the distance to be covered. And where the baton has been dropped in a way that moves it sideways or forwards in the direction of running, including beyond the finish line, the athlete must return at least to the point where it was last in their hand before continuing.
Follow all of that, and impede nobody else in the process, and dropping the baton is not a disqualification.
So the drop is survivable. What is not survivable is the panic that follows it. The three ways teams turn a recoverable drop into a disqualification are all instinctive reactions.
The wrong athlete picks it up. In the confusion of a botched exchange, the runner nearest the baton grabs it, and that is often the outgoing runner rather than the one who lost it. Only the athlete who dropped it may recover it. During an exchange gone wrong, working out which of the two that was is a judgement for the umpires, based on who last had it in their hand, and it is not always obvious from the stands.
The athlete rejoins ahead of where the baton left his hand. A baton that skitters forward has gained ground the runner has not covered. Picking it up and running on from there shortens the race, and the rule requires a walk back to at least the point of loss. Athletes who have just made a public mistake in front of a full stadium are not in an ideal state for that calculation.
Someone gets impeded. A runner chasing a baton across two lanes is a hazard to everyone in them, and obstruction brings the general rule on jostling into play regardless of how correctly the retrieval was otherwise handled.
There is one situation where a drop is very likely fatal rather than merely expensive, and it is the drop during the exchange itself. The pass has to be completed inside the zone. A baton fumbled at the moment of transfer costs a second or two to recover while the runners are already deep in a 30-metre strip they are travelling through at speed, and the zone tends to run out before the baton is back under control in one hand.
Taking another team's baton is a straightforward disqualification for the team that did it. The team whose baton was taken is not penalised unless it obtained an advantage, which is the rules doing something sensible about a situation nobody could have prevented.
- The outgoing runner sets the markA single piece of tape, within his own lane, at a distance calibrated in training for this specific pairing. The rules allow one check-mark and no more, and a judge will remove anything else.
- He takes his position inside the zoneFeet completely inside the 30-metre strip, body half turned, weight forward, eyes fixed on the mark behind him rather than on his team-mate.
- The incoming runner hits the markThe trigger is the leading foot landing on or crossing the tape. It is binary, and it is the only decision the outgoing runner makes.
- He goes, and does not look backMaximum acceleration, arms driving, eyes forward. Turning to look would cost speed and would move the receiving hand, which is the one thing that has to stay still.
- The gap closes, then stops closingThe incoming runner is faster at first and the distance shrinks. As the outgoing runner reaches matching speed, the gap reaches its minimum. That minimum is the exchange, and it lasts a fraction of a second.
- The call is madeThe incoming runner shouts the agreed cue when he is in range. The outgoing runner puts his hand back on the sound and holds it absolutely still.
- First contact starts the passThe pass legally commences the instant the receiving athlete touches the baton, and that must happen with the whole baton inside the zone.
- The baton is delivered and releasedUpsweep, downsweep or push, into a hand that has not moved. The pass is complete the moment the baton is in the hand of only the receiving athlete, and that must also happen before the zone ends.
- The incoming runner holds his laneHaving handed over, he must stay in his lane or hold his position until the track is clear. Drifting across into a neighbouring team is obstruction, and it disqualifies teams that made a perfect exchange.
- The outgoing runner runs his legHe is now the only athlete the lane rules apply to. In the 4x100m the whole race is run in lanes, so the next constraint is the line on his left.
The sequence a coached exchange runs through, combining the requirements of Technical Rule 24 with standard sprint relay practice. Distances and timings are described rather than quoted, because they are properties of a particular pair of athletes.
Lane infringement is the disqualification nobody sees coming
The exchange gets all the attention. A meaningful share of relay disqualifications come from somewhere else entirely: the lane lines.
Two facts make the relay a lane-rule minefield. The 4x100m is run entirely in lanes, and for a second or so at each changeover there are two athletes in a lane 1.22 metres wide, one of them accelerating and one of them decelerating and out of breath.
The general rule is that stepping outside your lane is a disqualification, with exceptions. Among the exceptions are being pushed or forced out by another person or object, stepping outside in the straight or over the outer line of the lane on a bend, and, in races run in lanes, touching once the line on the left or the kerb marking the inside of the track on a bend. Those exceptions apply only where no other athlete is jostled or obstructed and no material advantage is gained.
Here is the part that catches relay teams specifically, and it is a relatively recent tightening. Those one-off touches are permitted once by a particular athlete across all rounds of an event. A second one disqualifies. In a relay, that carries across the whole team: any second such action by an athlete who is a member of the team, whether or not it is the same athlete who committed the first, disqualifies the team, whether it happens in the same round or in another round of the same event.
Read that as arithmetic and it is uncomfortable. Four athletes, three rounds at a championship, one permitted lane touch between the lot of them. A runner clipping the inside line coming off the bend in a heat has spent the team's allowance, and the team goes into a final one contact away from elimination without anything visible having gone wrong.
There is a further lane provision that lives inside the takeover zone. An athlete who steps outside the allocated lane inside the zone, without gaining material advantage and without obstructing anyone, falls under the same exception rather than being automatically disqualified. That is a sensible piece of drafting, because a receiver running away from an incoming runner in a shared lane genuinely has less room than a solo sprinter.
And after the pass, athletes must keep in their lane or maintain position until the course is clear. An incoming runner who has just handed over and drifts sideways while decompressing has impeded another team, and the rule on obstruction applies. It is the most avoidable disqualification in the event and it happens because a runner who has finished his job stops behaving like a competitor.
Why relays are disqualified so often
Put all of the above together and the answer stops being mysterious.
An individual sprinter has one way to be disqualified before the gun and a small number of ways afterwards. A 4x100m team has three exchanges, each involving two athletes, each with a legally distinct first-touch moment and completion moment, each of which must happen inside a fixed strip of track, judged on the position of an object rather than of a person. That is at least six independent chances to break the zone rule, before anyone touches a line.
Then add the structural pressures.
The receiver cannot see the baton. This is deliberate and correct, and it also means that neither athlete can correct an error once it develops. The incoming runner can shout, the receiver can hold his hand out, and beyond that they are committed.
The calibration is fragile. A go-mark encodes the properties of a specific pair on a specific day. Championships change the pairings between rounds, move teams between lanes, and run heats in the morning and finals in the evening in different conditions.
The incentives point at the edge of the rules. A team that hands the baton over early and safely, in the first third of the zone, is passing it at a lower speed and using less of the free distance available. That is slower, and slower loses. Every serious squad is deliberately operating close to a boundary, because the boundary is where the time is. A team that never risks a disqualification is a team leaving metres on the track, and coaches know it.
The personnel are often assembled recently. National relay squads are drawn from athletes who spend the year competing individually, sometimes on different continents, and who may have run together for a handful of sessions before a championship. The exchange is a pairs skill being executed by people selected as individuals.
The margins are photographed. Umpires at each zone, video review and finish-line camera systems mean that a marginal baton position which would once have been waved through is now adjudicated. That is fairer, and it produces more disqualifications, not fewer.
None of that makes relay teams careless. It makes the event a low-probability failure repeated many times under pressure, which is a design that will produce failures at a steady rate no matter how good everyone is.
How a squad decides its running order
The four legs of a 4x100m are not four copies of the same job.
Leg one starts from blocks and runs a bend. He gives the baton and never receives one, which makes him the only member of the team who does not need the receiving skill at all. He does need a reliable start, because the false start rules apply to a relay exactly as they apply to an individual race, and a start that costs the team a disqualification is worse than a slow one. The mechanics of what he is doing in the first thirty metres are set out in our piece on what actually happens in a sprint start, and the consequences of getting it wrong are covered in the piece on how false starts are ruled on. He also needs to run a bend well, tight to the inside of the lane, carrying in his right hand so that the baton is on the outer side.
Leg two runs the back straight and covers more ground than anyone. He receives and gives, which is the hardest combination, and he does it in a straight line, which is the easiest place to do it.
Leg three runs the second bend. He receives blind and gives blind while on a curve, holding a line against the pull of the turn with one arm occupied. It is the most technical leg in the event, and it is routinely given to the athlete with the best bend running rather than the best straight-line speed.
Leg four receives and finishes. He runs the home straight, never has to hand over, and gets the photograph. Traditionally the fastest athlete goes here, and the tradition is worth questioning.
The arithmetic in that constructed example is the argument against the tradition. Because each outgoing runner starts moving well before he receives, the middle two legs run substantially further than 100 metres, while the first runner covers a little over 100 from a standing start and the last runs least of all. If your fastest athlete is a pure speed sprinter who fades late, the last leg suits him. If he is a 200-metre type with speed endurance, the middle legs are where his advantage is largest, and putting him on the anchor wastes it on the shortest run of the four.
There are second-order considerations that decide as many selections as speed does.
Who can receive. Some very fast athletes never become comfortable taking a baton blind, and no amount of coaching changes it inside a season. Those athletes go on leg one.
Who can be trusted in a headwind. The go-mark for a leg that finishes into the wind needs a different setting from the same leg with the wind behind, which is one reason wind matters in a relay beyond the ratification rules described in our piece on how wind readings are taken and applied.
Which pairs already work. A squad with two athletes who have run the same exchange hundreds of times will often keep them together and build the rest of the order around that fixed pair.
Who is running the individual events. At a championship, relay legs are being run by athletes who may have three rounds of a 100m or a 200m in their legs, and the freshest athlete is not the fastest one on paper.
The 4x400m order follows a different logic. The lead-off runs in lanes and has to run a controlled first 400 without being drawn into chasing the stagger. The second is often the runner best at holding position through the break, because the field converges the moment the break line is passed. The third is frequently the weakest of the four, protected by being handed the baton in traffic where the damage is limited. The anchor needs to run 400 metres in a crowd while doing arithmetic, and that is a temperament as much as a talent.
Why the fastest four rarely make the fastest quartet
A relay team's time is not the sum of four sprints. It is the sum of four runs, plus three exchanges, and the exchange term can be worth more than the difference between two good sprinters.
Free distance is the main reason. Three exchanges with fully extended arms hand the baton a meaningful head start over three cramped ones, and it is free in a way nothing else in the sport is: no fitness required, no talent, just a pair of athletes who trust each other enough to reach.
Speed at transfer is the second. The baton should change hands with both runners travelling at close to full speed, so that the outgoing runner is not accelerating out of a checked position afterwards. An exchange that forces the receiver to hesitate for a tenth of a second does not cost a tenth of a second. It costs that, plus the acceleration he then has to rebuild.
Then there is the compatibility problem. Two athletes with near-identical top speeds but different acceleration profiles need different go-marks, and a squad has to calibrate every pairing it might use. A team of four very fast individuals who have never rehearsed together has, in effect, three uncalibrated exchanges.
And there is the specialisation problem. The four jobs need a starter, two bend runners, a receiver-giver who can work on a curve, and a finisher. The four fastest athletes in a country will not naturally distribute themselves across those roles, and forcing them to produces a slower team than picking a slightly slower athlete who fits the leg.
This is why relay results are not predictable from individual rankings, and why national squads that look modest on paper beat squads that look overwhelming. It is also why relay places at major championships, and the qualifying routes to them described in our piece on how athletes and teams qualify for the Olympics, are worth so much to federations with strong depth and no individual medallist.
The 4x400 changeover is a different event with the same name
Everything above assumes a lane. The 4x400m spends most of its life outside one, and its changeover rules exist to stop the resulting scrum becoming a lottery.
The race may be run in lanes for the first leg plus the part of the second leg up to the break line, which is three bends in lanes, or in lanes only for the first leg up to the break line, which is one bend. Where no more than four teams are competing, the second arrangement is the one that should be used. Leaving the lane before the break line disqualifies the team.
Once the field is out of lanes, the waiting runners have a problem that does not exist in a sprint relay: all of them are standing on the same piece of track waiting for team-mates who are arriving in a bunch. The rules solve it by ordering them.
For the third and fourth legs, and for the second leg where the race breaks after one bend, the waiting athletes must place themselves, under the direction of a designated official, in the same order from the inside out as the order of their own team-mates as those team-mates enter the last bend. Once the incoming athletes have passed that point, the waiting athletes must keep that order and must not swap positions at the beginning of the zone. Breaking that disqualifies the team.
That single provision explains most of what looks chaotic about a 4x400 changeover on television. The runners shuffling sideways and glancing at an official are being ranked by their team-mates' race positions. A team that moves up on the last bend earns an inner slot for its next runner, which is a real advantage, because the inside of the track is the shortest way round and an outside receiver has to cut across traffic to get there.
Where lanes are not being used, waiting athletes may take an inner position as their team-mate approaches, provided they do not jostle or obstruct anyone. That permission and the order requirement are in tension by design: a runner may improve his position, but not by pushing, and not by changing the order the official set.
The exchange itself is visual and comparatively simple. The receiver watches the baton in, usually takes it in the left hand, and only then accelerates. Nobody wins a 4x400 with a brilliant changeover. Plenty of teams lose one by being on the wrong side of three other runners at the moment their team-mate arrives.
What has changed recently, and what it does to squads
Two changes are worth knowing about if you are watching relays over the next few seasons.
The first is the substitution limit. World Athletics has restricted teams to a maximum of two substitutions between the heats and the final in the men's and women's 4x100m and 4x400m, effective from the start of 2026, with the mixed relays left as they were. Previously there was no such cap, and the strongest nations used it: a second-string quartet ran the heat, and the team that appeared in the final could be four different athletes.
The consequence runs directly through everything in this article. Under the old arrangement, a final could be contested by a quartet whose three exchanges had never been executed together in that competition, on that track, in those conditions. Under the new one, at least two of the four, and therefore at least one of the three exchanges, carries over from the round before. It forces the heats to matter, it rewards squads with genuine depth rather than squads with two stars and a resting strategy, and it should, over time, reduce the number of finals decided by an exchange nobody had rehearsed.
The second change is quieter and lives in the rulebook. The declaration requirements around relay composition have been tightened in recent editions: the team and the running order must be declared by the published first call time for the relevant heat in each round, and the team must compete as named and in the declared order, on pain of disqualification. Teams may still use substitutes within the limits the rules set, but the paperwork is now a place where a relay can be lost before anyone reaches the track. More than one team has been removed from a result for running its declared athletes in the wrong order, which is a heartbreaking way to go out and entirely preventable.
The lane infringement carry-forward described earlier is also a recent change rather than a long-standing rule, and it is the one that has quietly raised the cost of a scruffy heat. Federations track these infringements in the competition data systems and they are shown in the start lists and results, so a team knows perfectly well whether it is carrying one.
For the broader context of how relay performances feed the ranking system that decides who gets into championships, our piece on how ranking points are accumulated covers the machinery, and the rest of our athletics coverage works through the events one rulebook at a time.
Four things to watch at the next changeover
The relay is the most legible event in athletics if you know where to point your eyes, and almost none of it is where the camera is.
Watch the outgoing runner's feet as he goes. Are they completely inside the zone at the moment he starts to move? That is a rule, it is judged, and it is visible from the stand. A runner creeping forward before he goes is a team about to have a conversation with an umpire.
Watch where in the zone the baton first touches the hand. A good exchange happens in the last third, at speed, with both arms extended. One in the first third is a team that has lost its nerve or mis-set its mark, and it is slower even when it is legal.
Watch the incoming runner after he has let go. He should hold his lane and stay put until the track is clear. Two steps sideways while he catches his breath is obstruction, and it has ended better teams than a dropped baton has.
Watch the gap at the moment of transfer. The distance between the two hands is free distance, and it is the clearest visible marker of a team that has rehearsed together. A big, confident, fully stretched gap means two athletes who trust the mark. A short one means somebody looked.
Do that at three exchanges and you will know more about how a team has been prepared than the finishing order will tell you. The baton covers the same 400 metres for everybody. What varies is how much of it the runners have to cover themselves, and how close to a painted line they were willing to go to find out.
Common questions
How long is the relay takeover zone?
In the 4x100m and 4x200m, and for the first two changes of the medley relay, the takeover zone is 30 metres long, and it is not centred on the scratch line: it begins 20 metres before the line and ends 10 metres after it. In the 4x400m and longer relays, and for the third change of the medley relay, the zone is 20 metres long with the scratch line at its centre. In both cases only the position of the baton matters, not the position of the runners.
What happens if you drop the baton in a relay?
Dropping it is not automatically a disqualification. The rules require the athlete who dropped it to be the one who picks it up, allow that athlete to leave the lane to retrieve it provided the distance to be covered is not shortened, and require them to return at least to the point where the baton was last in their hand if it has moved forwards or sideways. Do all of that without impeding anyone else and the team stays in the race.
Why are so many relay teams disqualified?
Because a relay multiplies the number of ways to fail. Each of the three exchanges has two athletes, a first-touch moment and a completion moment, all of which must happen inside a fixed strip of track while the receiver is running away from the baton and cannot see it. Add lane rules that apply to two runners occupying the same lane at once, and a team has far more opportunities to break a rule than an individual sprinter does.
What is the difference between a blind and a visual baton exchange?
In a blind, or non-visual, exchange the outgoing runner sets off on a mark, puts a hand back on a cue and never looks at the baton, which is how the 4x100m is run because turning to look costs speed and moves the target hand. In a visual exchange the outgoing runner watches the baton into the hand, which is slower and far safer, and is how the 4x400m is run because the incoming runner arrives tired and at an unpredictable speed.
What is the go-mark in a relay?
It is the point on the track, marked with a single piece of tape, at which the outgoing runner starts to run. The rules permit each athlete one check-mark within their own lane, made of adhesive tape no larger than 0.05m by 0.40m in a colour that cannot be confused with the track markings. The distance is calibrated in training for a specific pair of runners, which is why changing one runner invalidates the mark for both.
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