4 × 800 m relay, women

What to remember

Moscow, August 5, 1984: four Soviet runners, Irina Podyalovskaya, Nadezhda Olizarenko, Lyubov Gurina and Lyudmila Borisova, each ran two laps of the track and finished the 4 × 800 m relay in 7 min 50.17 s, an average of 24.502 km/h.

Earlier that summer, on June 22, 1984 in Kiev, Podyalovskaya had run her 800 m personal best of 1:55.69. The relay is rarely contested, but the IAAF ratifies records in it, and it became a world championship event in 2014 as part of the IAAF World Relays.

On the men's side, a Kenyan team ran 7:02.43 on August 25, 2006 at the Memorial Van Damme in Brussels: Joseph Mutua, William Yiampoy, Ismael Kombich and Wilfred Bungei. The imperial counterpart, the 4 × 880 yards or two-mile relay, adds up to 3,520 yards (3,218.688 m), slightly longer than the 3200 m metric distance.