This is the year for SA’s 4x400m team to show its potential

South Africa’s mixed 4x400m combination has the perfect chance to show its true capability later this year.

The athletics schedule at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow offers only one 4x400m relay — the mixed — meaning no selection headaches involving crossovers with the men’s and women’s teams.

South Africa’s mixed team wants to win one of two time slots at the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championships in Budapest a month later, which features only mixed relays.

South Africa and Australia are both close in the mixed 4x400m hunt and could use the competition in Scotland to push each other to Hungary.

On paper South Africa is hot — Zakithi Nene (44.10), Miranda Coetzee (49.76), Lythe Pillay (42.66) and Zeney Geldenhuys (50.81) could produce 3min 07.33sec, inside the 3:07.41 global mark.

Not convinced

But former national 400m record-holder Arnaud Malherbe is not convinced about the ability of the mixed team to win medals at major events, like the Olympics and world championships. “The women are the weak link,” he says.

The top four male South Africans on the all-time national 400m list are all active, unlike the women, where the top-ranked active athlete, Miranda Coetzee, is fifth.

Nene was third, the highest-ranked South African male 400m runner in the world in 2025, while Coetzee was 63rd.

Only 29 men have broken 44 seconds in the 400m, 16 of them from the US. South Africa, Botswana and Jamaica are the only others with two. Pillay could join Wayde van Niekerk and Nene this season.

Caster Semenya’s 49.62 national record ranks 71st on the all-time women’s list, while Coetzee’s 50.66 best is 260th.

Slowest to fastest

Malherbe said this meant the biggest problem in the mixed relay was the prescribed man-woman-man-woman format instead of his preferred 4x400m strategy of running slowest to fastest.

Gaps built up by using the fastest members early get shut down by the teams with fast athletes on the final leg, he argued.

“In my experience, gaps always get closed ... It almost doesn’t matter how big the gap is [after] the third leg; it will get closed down by the top women in the world, and it’s not only Sydney [McLaughlin-Levrone of the US], there’s a whole bunch of them.”

An exception was Belgium winning 2025 world championship bronze with a 51.12 runner.

But with several young women moving into the senior ranks, this could be a South African team for the future.