4 × 800 m relay, men

What to remember

At the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels, on August 25, 2006, four Kenyans, Joseph Mutua, William Yiampoy, Ismael Kombich and Wilfred Bungei, ran the 4 × 800 m in 7 min 02.43 s. Each of them covered two laps of the track, for an average of 27.271 km/h over the whole race.

Mostly run at major American universities, the 4 × 800 m became a world championship event in 2014, as part of the IAAF World Relays. For women, the benchmark dates from August 15, 1984 in Moscow: 7:50.17, by a Soviet Union team. The imperial version, the two-mile relay (4 × 880 yards), was slightly longer than the metric 3200 m.

Joseph Mutua, born in 1978 in Machakos, was an 800 m specialist. Kenyan champion in 2002, 2003 and 2004, he ran the distance in 1:43.33 in Zürich in August 2002, and set the African indoor record of 1:44.71 in Stuttgart in January 2004. That same year he reached the 800 m semi-finals at the Olympic Games.