RALEIGH, North Carolina (Reuters) – U.S. athletics officials, in a bid to stem relay failures at major championships, have called a summit for next month to discuss the problem.
Select athletes, coaches and officials tentatively will meet Oct. 16 in Orlando, Florida, to talk about the good and bad of U.S. relay preparation and execution, USA Track and Field (USATF) chief of sport performance Benita Fitzgerald Mosley told Reuters via telephone from Indianapolis on Wednesday.
“We want to codify things that work well,” she said.
Lately that has been a short list for U.S. sprint relay teams. Both the men’s and women’s 4×100 metres relay teams were disqualified at the 2008 Olympic Games and 2009 world championships because of dropped batons or other infractions.
Former USATF CEO Doug Logan, who was ousted over the weekend, initiated a review of the organization after the poor Olympic showing, and it called for significant changes in U.S. relay preparations.
The summit, in the planning stage for months, is the first of its kind since that review, said Fitzgerald Mosley, the 1984 Olympic 100 metres hurdles champion.
“The ultimate goal is to come out with a framework for a policy,” she said.
