The eighth World Athletics Relays close on Sunday at Botswana National Stadium with three sprint-relay finals that, on Saturday's evidence, could deliver another world record before the prize money is handed out. Jamaica's quartet of Ackeem Blake, Tina Clayton, Kadrian Goldson and Tia Clayton produced the first sub-40 ever run in the mixed 4x100m on Saturday, a 39.99 that took Canada's hour-old 40.07 mark off them in heat three. Sunday's straight final pits the two record-trading nations directly against each other for the first time.
The home billing belongs to Letsile Tebogo, who turned a fourth-place handover into a Botswana national record of 37.96 with his anchor leg of the men's 4x100m heats, dragging the home team into Sunday's final. Botswana's men line up against Canada's Andre De Grasse-led group, who clocked 37.56 in heat two, and a South African team that breezed through in 37.68. Britain, second in the same South African heat in 38.01, will run for a podium and a Beijing 27 lane seeding rather than the win.
The women's 4x100m final is the most open of the three sprint relays. With reigning Olympic champions the United States not entering a women's 4x100m team in Gaborone, Saturday's heats produced a much-changed front rank: Jamaica, Canada and the Netherlands carrying preferential lane positions into Sunday and Spain, Germany and Switzerland in the chase pack. Top six teams in each final automatically book their place at September's inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest.
Sunday's programme also includes the men's and women's 4x400m finals, where Botswana's reigning world-champion men's quartet of Lee Bhekempilo Eppie, Letsile Tebogo, Bayapo Ndori and Collen Kebinatshipi line up in front of a sold-out home stadium, and the women's race opens up with the United States again absent. The mixed 4x400m final, the championship's signature event, brings Saturday's heats back together and remains the marquee qualifier for the Beijing 27 World Championships start list.
Sunday's session also doubles as a championship-points payday: World Athletics has weighted Gaborone's prize fund towards finals, with $50,000 to each winning relay team and an additional $10,000 bonus for any world record. Top-two finishers in each final automatically secure 2027 Beijing World Championships start spots; the chasing pack will spend the rest of the European outdoor season trying to back-door their way in. Heat-one through heat-six results from Saturday have, between them, set up arguably the deepest Sunday of relay finals the championship has staged since its 2014 inception.