This weekend, squads of the fastest sprinters dozens of nations have to offer will descend upon Guangzhou, a sprawling city of about 20 million on southern China’s Pearl River, for the 2025 World Relays.

These national relay teams will be vying for coveted lanes at this September’s World Championships in Tokyo, and apparently some prize money, too. But for the most part, traditionally important sporting concepts like “glory” and “victory” won't be stressed over too much. That’s because in the world of track and field relays, there’s a mighty wide chasm between the best and the rest.

Squads that know they statistically deserve to line up at Worlds (like the United States, Jamaica, Great Britain, Canada, etc.) often trot out their—still very fast!—B- or even C-teams, with a few notable exceptions. For relay squads in this category, this sojourn to Guangzhou packs all the excitement of a short business trip centered around a compulsory HR training. The stakes are high, but assuming you don’t totally step in it, there will be approximately zero fanfare if you succeed—only dire consequences if you fumble the baton.

Of course there are also national federations for whom qualifying for Worlds will be cause for rapturous celebration… the sorts of teams that will by and large just be happy to be in Tokyo, and if they upset a contender or two, that’s just gravy. These teams will bring a bit more energy to Guangzhou, but fundamentally it’s hard to get too amped up when the athletes most stoked about their performances are the ones finishing in fourth or fifth in their heats of the final in Guangzhou.

As of Tuesday evening, World Athletics hasn’t shared information on how to watch the meet for fans in the United States. But assuming that little issue is ironed out or you’re particularly handy with a VPN, you should tune in!

For starters, there may not be full star power coming out of Team USA, but this year they’re something of an outlier. Olympic champs Letsile Tebogo and Andre de Grasse are entered on their respective 4x100ms for Botswana and Canada, and Jamaica has entered two of its fastest male sprinters: Kishane Thompson and Ackeem Blake (although TBD on who actually shows up). And even without Noah Lyles, the U.S. men will still be ably represented by Kenny Bednarek and Erriyon Knighton – if they can get the stick all the way around.

On the women’s side, the big headline is the returns of Shericka Jackson and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce after both skipped out on the relays at last summer’s Olympics. Jackson is entered on the single-gender 4x100m and SAFP is lending her name and credibility to the living experiment that is the first mixed-gender 4x100m relay.

The schadenfreude-inclined among us should also appreciate the opportunity to view a whole bunch of chaos. The 4x100m is famously fun to watch not because it offers a second look at the world’s fastest woman or man, but because it gives us a chance for the world’s fastest woman or man to look very, very silly as a botched handoff or dropped baton upsets the form charts.

Last, but not least, consider that World Athletics is trotting out another concept it’s hard to imagine anyone was clamoring for: the mixed gender 4x100m relay. Do you really want to miss what will be the de facto world record in this brand new event? Oh wait… what’s that? Records for this event won’t be recognized until the beginning of 2026, so this will only count as a “world best?” Nevertheless! We scoffed at the mixed 4x400m when it first emerged from the shared consciousness of several consultant-types hired by WA, but we’ve come around to it for the simple reason that relays are fun.

Relays in championships are a prime stage for unlikely individual heroes to emerge. All-but-crowned titans flub off handoffs or blitz through exchange zones. And star athletes generally focused only on their own performance suddenly feel accountable to a collective. Is the global debut of the mixed 4x100m going to propel the World Relays to the front of every sports page around the globe? Definitely not. But does it give existing track fans a few more minutes of potentially interesting racing to consume? Sure. And maybe that’s enough.

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