Kansas Relays
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| Location | 1651 Naismith Drive Lawrence, Kansas |
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| Dates | Third Thursday in April–Third Saturday in April |
| Established | 1923 |
| Administrator(s) | University of Kansas |
| Format | Track and Field |
The Kansas Relays are a three-day track meet every April, held at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Since 1923, the Kansas Relays have attracted runners, throwers, and jumpers from all over the United States of America, bringing in athletes ranging from Olympians to high-schoolers. Olympians such as Marion Jones and Maurice Greene compete in the Gold Zone portion of the meet, which attracts thousands of spectators every year. Competitors have also broken world records at the meet. The 2004 Olympic champion, Justin Gatlin, was a prominent athlete to fail a doping test at the Kansas Relays.
The Kansas relays were founded by John H. Outland, the head football coach at the University of Kansas, in 1923. He got the idea for the Kansas Relays from the Penn Relays. The Penn Relays are held at the University of Pennsylvania and is the oldest and largest track meet in the United States. Outland attended the University of Pennsylvania for medical school and where he first saw the Penn relays. John Outland thought that there should be an event like the Penn relays in Kansas so in 1920 he approached Kansas basketball coach Forrest Clare Allen, also known as Phog Allen, who was also the athletic director and football coach at the University of Kansas. Three years later in 1923 the Kansas relays were founded.
More than 600 athletes participated in the 1st annual Kansas relays on April 20, 1923. During the relays early years the meet featured collegiate athletes in track and field such as Tom Poor, Ed Weir, and Tom Churchill were some of the athletes who later competed in the Olympics. Tom Poor was the first to win the high jump event in Kansas Relays, with a jump of six feet and a quarter inch. He later went on to place fourth in the 1924 Olympics. Ed Weir set a world record for the 120 meter high hurdles at the Kansas Relays in 1926. With world-class athletes competing in the relays, the first decade of the relays paved the way for the Kansas Relays to be a major event in the track and field event in the Mid-West.
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