Organisers in Des Moines have confirmed the final schedule for the 116th Drake Relays, the four-day festival of athletics that runs from Wednesday 22 April to Saturday 25 April at Drake University's historic Blue Oval. Friday's announcement, released alongside an updated roster of entries for the World Athletics Continental Tour Silver portion of the meet, points to one of the strongest distance and jumps line-ups in the event's modern era, headed by an Addy Wiley mile double, a pole vault bill featuring the world's two best women and a clutch of high-school middle-distance records waiting to be chased.
Wiley, the American 1000m record-holder and bronze medallist at last month's World Indoor Championships in Toruń, will contest both the Grand Blue Mile road event on Wednesday evening and the Saturday mile inside Drake Stadium. The Grand Blue Mile, which doubles as the USATF Road Mile Championship, has pulled together its deepest women's field in recent memory and will be the closing event of its downtown road programme. Wiley has said she will treat the two miles as stand-alone efforts; organisers have nonetheless positioned the entries as a chance for her to become the first woman to win Drake's marquee road and stadium miles in the same week since Heather Kampf in 2018.
The pole vault showcase inside Drake Stadium will see world number one Katie Moon and world number two Sandi Morris share a runway for the first time this spring, alongside American men's record-holder KC Lightfoot and two-time Olympic medallist Sam Kendricks. Drake's pole vault has routinely produced world-leading marks in recent years, and with the field enhancements announced this week — an additional runway skim, new bar-handling kit and a fresh purpose-built wind screen — the meet is hoping for a statement display a week before the Diamond League opens its 2026 season in Keqiao. The women's vault is scheduled as the final field event on Saturday evening under the lights.
The distance slate also carries its share of intrigue. The men's 5000m, a Continental Tour Silver event, has drawn Cooper Teare, Nico Young and Adam Fogg; the invitational 800m women's race features Roisin Willis and Juliette Whittaker; and the invitational 3000m men's race, which replaces the 5000m for collegiate contenders, includes a Stanford trio making their outdoor debuts after the programme's strong showing at the April 4 Stanford Invitational. High-school brackets have drawn several national entrants, with national-record attempts pencilled in for the boys' 4x800m relay and the girls' 4x1600m.
Weekend weather in central Iowa looks benign, with highs in the mid-60s Fahrenheit across Friday and Saturday and a slight north-west breeze through much of the programme. The Drake Relays remain one of only a small number of US meets that attract full sell-out crowds, and the Saturday ticket allocation is already understood to be gone; organisers have increased Friday evening capacity this year and will stream both full days free of charge on the meet's own platform. Full heat sheets and start lists will be published on Monday night ahead of Wednesday's opening field events.