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Coach Edrick Floreal has explained the key things USA’s men's 4x100m relay team can bounce back to winning ways at the Olympic Games.
Julien Alfred’s coach Edrick Floreal has offered insights about how Team USA’s men’s 4x100m relay team can bounce back to winning ways on the Olympic stage after last winning the title at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
The men’s relay team has struggled to make an impact at the Olympics as they also missed out on a podium place from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. In this year’s edition of the Olympics, the team was disqualified due to faulty baton exchanges.
Coach Floreal, popularly known as Coach Flo, explained that the relationship between competitors matters a lot and that’s one of the major things that has cost Team USA a lot when it comes to dominating the relay.
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Being one of the most successful coaches in the world, the veteran tactician explained that the last-minute changes cost the athletes a lot and are bound to make them go into races with lesser confidence since there is no chemistry between the baton exchangers.
He cited an example of Christian Coleman being one of the fastest sprinters and having not had prior conversations with the athlete he will be handing the baton over to will change the perception of the receiver of the baton who might have trust issues and end up messing the algorithm.
“On that relay, the person that’s going out has to trust the person coming in and trust that if I make a mistake, I have you covered and there seem to be a little bit of lack of that. The last-minute changes never help relays because mindset, fear and anxiety come when you don’t trust person,” Coach Flo said on a live interview with retired Trinidadian sprinter Ato Boldon.
He added that whenever his athletes are racing in the relays, he always ensures everyone is comfortable in the leg they are in and are able to trust the athletes handing them the baton.
Coach Floreal explained that if that is not the case, he is usually focused on ensuring they have a talk and plan about how they would go about the race, to make sure that all the athletes know that there is room for error and they can always bounce back.
“I think relays are really based on trust in relationship and the ongoing and outgoing round, there has to be a level of trust there and I think there was a moment on our relay where I think Juju (Julien Alfred) was on third leg and there was some anxiety about how she was going to take off too fast and too hard and the next athlete was not going to be able to give her the baton,” he said.
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“The feedback from me was to tell Juju to go tell the other person that they could do whatever they wanted and mess up how they wanted and take off early and she would hand them the baton. If the outgoing runner is no longer concerned because the person’s that incoming has told them, ‘Girl, I got you’.”
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