26mi235 wrote:decafan wrote:Why in the world would we want to run mixed relays? Forget the logistics of the exchanges, your big problem will be overcoming the natural tendencies of the viewer to feel negativity toward the slower legs (women). One unintended consequence will be the highlighting of just how much faster men are than women. The casual fan will never keep proper perspective. "We were fine until the chick got the stick. Ugh..." Once the novelty wears off, there is nothing much gained, and quite a bit lost. Women lose big on this idea.
Why do women lose big? Because the incoming runner is faster, putting in an order that has a man handing to a woman is a poor strategy. I think it will almost always be WWMM given the choice. Then, the women are not running against the man and the differential in speed is not so large that they look like they are on different planets.
Women don't lose big in your scenario. I was responding to the idea put forth early in this thread that you could place people in whatever order you want, guaranteeing male vs female match-ups. WWMM races don't excite me much either, but at least you don't set our best female athletes up for terrible failure against our best men.
That's if Bolt ran smartly and didn't try and make up the whole deficit too quickly. If Bolt were to foolishly pull even with Richards at the 200-meter mark, the spectacle on the homestretch would be embarassing for him and a lot of folks would be yelling 