IAAF Moves 2021 World Relays to Europe

By Adam Kopet

The fifth edition of the IAAF World Relays will take place May 1-2, 2021 in Chorzow, Poland, according to an IAAF press release.

The World Relays have been a recent addition to the international track and field calendar with the first edition taking place in 2014 in The Bahamas. The meet was also held there in 2015 and 2017.

This year, the World Relays came into some doubt as the government of The Bahamas decided not to financially support the meet anymore. Jamaica was considered as an early replacement candidate, but the meet eventually went to Yokohama, Japan.

Now the next edition of the World Relays will go to Europe for the first time. Chorzow is in the Silesia region in the south-central part of Poland. The Silesian Stadium has hosted several well-attended meets in recent years, including the Kamila Skolimowska Memorial, which has attracted a crowd of more than 40,000 people.

Poland has a recent history of hosting several IAAF events, including the World U-18 Championships, the World U-20 Championships (twice), the World Cross Country Championships and the World Indoor Championships. Next year, the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships will be held in Gdynia, on the Baltic coast.

Poland has also had recent success in the relays in international competition. The Polish men broke the 4x400 relay indoor world record at the 2018 IAAF World Indoor Championships. The women's 4x400 relay team won at this year's World Relays in Yokohama.

The 2021 IAAF World Relays will act as a qualifier for relay teams for the 2021 World Athletics Championships in Eugene.

At this time there is no news on whether the IAAF's name change at the end of this year to World Athletics will affect the name of the World Relays, as calling the meet the World Athletics World Relays does not make a lot of sense.