Penn Relays

The Penn Relays (also Penn Relay Carnival) is the oldest and largest track and field competition in the United States, hosted annually since April 21, 1895 by the University of Pennsylvania at Franklin Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In 2012, there were 116 events run at the meet and more athletes run in the Penn Relays than do any other track and field meet in the world. It regularly attracts more than 15,000 participants from high schools, colleges, and track clubs throughout North America and abroad, notably Jamaica, competing in more than 300 events over five days. Historically, the event has been credited with popularizing the running of relay races. It is held during the last full week in April, ending on the last Saturday in April. Attendance typically tops 100,000 over the final three days, and has been known to surpass 50,000 on Saturday. The Penn Relays also holds a Catholic Youth Organization night for Catholic Middle Schools in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. Preliminaries are run on the Tuesday during Carnival Week, and the Finals are run on Friday.

When the University of Pennsylvania Track and Field committee wanted to add a little bit more excitement to their 1893 spring handicapped meet, they came up with the idea of running a relay race at the meet. The team would consist of four men all running a quarter of a mile one after the other. Today this relay race is known as the 4 × 400 m relay. The sport of relay running was still fairly new at the time of the first Penn Relays, two years old to be exact. The Penn Relays impacted the history of the sport of relay racing and helped it become as popular as it is today. So during the 1893 spring handicapped track meet the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University men ran a relay race against each other. The Princeton men won with a time of 3:34 beating the University of Pennsylvania men by 8 yards.

The first ever Penn Relay Carnival was held on April 21, 1895 at Franklin Field and was a huge success. Approximately 5,000 people attended the meet. Nine relay races were run and only two teams were in each race. Four of which were high school and prep school races. Another four were college races and one championship college race. The only relay run at that time was the 4x440 yard relay or the mile relay. The first team to win a Penn Relays championship was Harvard University after they defeated University of Pennsylvania with a time of 3:34. Other colleges that competed in the meet were Cornell University, Columbia University, Lafayette, Lehigh, Rutgers, Swarthmore, College of the City of New York and New York University.

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