The FINA World Swimming Championships in Barcelona will see a new event make its debut, the Mixed Relay.
Teams will be able to enter two female swimmers and two male swimmers to compete in the relay events and may deploy them in any order that they see fit. This is bound to be a winner on so many levels as it will give many of the strong female swimmers the chance to show how they match up against their male counterparts, and will be a definite crowd puller.
The question is will other sporting events look to follow suit? Will we see mixed relays coming into the world of athletics? One would think that if the swimming is a success as this again would be of huge appeal to fans and also as a marketing tool. Then we could also see it in cycling in the velodrome, once again there have been many top female cyclists who would love to go head to head with their male counterparts.
Will such moves be welcomed by the International Olympic Committee, time will tell but we hope so as we believe this is a great decision and one that will bring fresh interest to the relays.
