Wayde van Niekerk will make history if he can medal in both Olympic relays

Wayde van Niekerk will make Olympic history once again if he wins medals in both relays at the Paris Olympics next month.

He is bidding to become the first man to win 4x100m and 4x400m medals at the same Olympics.

Van Niekerk, the 2016 Olympic 400m champion, was withdrawn from the one-lap race to boost both of South Africa’s relay teams.

The US-based star, who turned 32 on Monday, will instead race the 200m, where he has little chance of making the final, let alone reaching the podium.

And that means his legs will be fresh for the two relays at the closing end of the athletics programme in Paris.

It’s also debatable whether he would have been able to win a medal in the 400m considering he had run only one individual race over this distance this year, and though his 44.74 effort in New York in June wasn’t bad, he was still far from looking competitive.

At the same time last year he was substantially faster. 

Van Niekerk has made the 400m final at the last two world championships in 2022 and 2023, finishing fifth and seventh respectively, but racing three rounds at the Games would have probably taken its toll on his legs.

And he’ll need to be at his best if South Africa’s 4x400m team is to reach the podium.

They finished second at World Relays in May, but their time places them only fourth on the world list for 2024 so far.

The 4x100m is also a medal chance, but they have been missing a third-leg sprinter who can negotiate the bend into the home straight — and Van Niekerk plugs that gap.

Racing the heats and probably the semifinals of the 200m will give him some practice on that same bend ahead of the relay.

If South Africa strike in both events — the 4x100m final is on August 9 and the 4x400m the following night — Van Niekerk will again make history at the Olympics to add to his world-record performance winning gold eight years ago. 

Since the Olympics first staged the 4x100m and 4x400m relays at the same event, at Stockholm in 1912, no man has taken medals in both races at the same Games.

Briton John Regis won medals in both relays but at different Games, landing 4x100m silver at Seoul 1988 and 4x400m bronze at Barcelona 1992.

The women only started running both relays at Munich 1972, yet five ascended the podiums in both at the same Games.

Chandra Cheeseborough of the US achieved it first at Los Angeles 1984, just ahead of Canadian Marita Payne, whose teams ended second in both relays — on the same day.

Barbados-born Payne, a student at Florida State University, remains the only non-US athlete on the list.

Florence Griffith Joyner did it in Seoul and Gwen Torrence managed it in Barcelona. Both of them won 4x100m gold and 4x400m silver.

The last to land the relay double was Allyson Felix, bagging both medals at London 2012 and again at Rio 2016.

In 24 Games, 25 nations have medalled in both men’s relays in the same year. In 13 Games for the women, 26 countries have ascended both podiums.