By: Joe Juliano (Photo by: Joe Hale)
PHILADELPHIA - The 128th Penn Relays Carnival has been entrusted to the track and field history books, but the memories from the three days at Franklin Field will last a lifetime.
Runners and jumpers at all levels – elementary school, middle school, high school, college, pro and Masters – performed in front of huge crowds at the historic stadium, with both sides providing the electricity and excitement over the weekend of competition. Perhaps the fans went home from all the races thinking they may have found the next Renaldo Nehemiah or Justin Gatlin or Allyson Felix or Sanya Richards-Ross or Carl Lewis, who was present the last few days with his University of Houston team.
The Penn Relays were being held for the third time since the pandemic wiped out two years of competition, and the carnival continued their recovery from that hiatus, attracting a crowd of 99,701 over the three days. It drew some top athletes focused on the Paris Olympics this summer including two-time Olympic high jumper Vashti Cunningham, 800-meter veteran Ajee Wilson, 2021 Olympic sprinter Bryce Deadmon and former Notre Dame star Yared Nuguse, the American record holder in the mile.
"You don't see track meets like this in America," said Randall Cunningham, Vashti's father and coach and former Philadelphia Eagles quarterback. "It's not that I think track is dying out. I just think that the people are very interested in coming here regardless of the weather. It's beautiful to see this. They do a great job. And at historical Franklin Field, come on. It's just amazing, it really is."
For many, the weekend was a continuation of the history and tradition that has been part of the Penn Relays since the first carnival in 1895. Veteran fans flocked back to the northeast corner of Franklin Field, also known as the "Woooo!" corner, to watch runners try to find another gear to finish first in a race. Carnival reunions took place throughout the stadium with fans flocking to the same seats as in previous years to catch up with old friends.
And when some fans and athletes needed to stretch their legs a little bit, they headed outside to the Carnival Village to socialize, listen to music, survey the food trucks, participate in games and giveaways, and visit vendors to purchase souvenirs. The village has added some flair to the activities since competition resumed in 2022 following the pandemic.
"The carnival atmosphere is something special that we've really worked to maintain – the vendor village and the DJ outside where people are kind of celebrating and having fun," said Steve Dolan, the Frank Dolson Director of the Penn Relays. "I think it makes the Penn Relays unique."
Inside the stadium, Villanova coach Marcus O'Sullivan, who won six Championship of America watches running relays for the Wildcats in the early to mid 1980s, knows the rhythm of the pace on the track, especially with the distance relay events, and that veteran track fans follow along.
"There's that hum that takes place in the stadium when it's quiet because people are talking," he said. "Then all of a sudden, that hum stops and everyone's just kind of, 'Hey, we've got a race here.' It's amazing. You can feel it. It's like a pulse. And there's no better place to be because people get it.
"You can feel the whole crowd and that's the beauty of Penn. It can be any race from the 100 to the 10,000. The fans really do understand competition and they really have an appreciation for what is taking place in the arena. It's always been a steadfast, consistent characteristic of Penn. They know when there's something at stake."
Memories of past races are locked in for those who have competed at Penn. For Cheryl Toussaint, whose high school, Erasmus Hall in Brooklyn, did not have sports teams for girls in the 1960s, the Penn Relays showed her the way to becoming a celebrated short- and middle-distance runner with the help of the Atoms Track Club, which began coming to the carnival in 1967 and wound up winning 35 carnival titles.
"When you come in from the outside of the stadium and you step into this huge arena, and you hear all this noise and people cheering, you look up and you kind of feel like you're in a pit," said Toussaint, an honorary carnival referee this year at Penn. "But it's an amazing place to compete. You feel cheered the whole way, every step of your competition. For me, it was just exciting."
Toussaint made the final of the 1968 U.S. Olympic Trials 800 at the age of 15 and won a silver medal four years later at the Munich Summer Games running the third leg on the U.S. 4x400-meter relay team. She has been meet director of the Colgate Women's Games since 2014.
Herman Frazier, a graduate of Germantown High School in Philadelphia, won 14 watches competing at the Penn Relays for Arizona State and the Philadelphia Pioneers Club and has spent more than 35 years as an official, the last 20 or so as Carnival Referee. He has seen much progress at the carnival in the last 50-plus years, especially recently under the leadership of Dolan, following in the footsteps of former directors Jim Tuppeny, Tim Baker and Dave Johnson.
"You can see the stamp that coach Dolan is putting on it," said Frazier, currently the senior deputy athletics director at Syracuse. "You look at it now with the touches he's added with so many distance events on Thursday and Friday nights. I think that's somewhat different.
"I think 1982 or '83 might have been the first time (the past directors) really went to the women's full day of competition. But they've respected the addition of female athletes to the event to make that more engaging for them as well. So yes, I've seen the evolution over the years, and it's kept up with the times."
The Penn Relays have had a history for unexpected great moments, like an unknown runner from Morehouse named Edwin Moses winning the college 400-meter hurdles on a Friday morning in 1976 and earning Olympic gold in Montreal three months later.
Or another hurdler, Renaldo Nehemiah, even without a Superman cape, leading his Maryland team to three relay championships, the last one in the 4x400 when Nehemiah took the baton for the anchor leg and made up a 20-meter deficit for the win.
Still, perhaps the greatest carnival moment of all came in 2010 when track legend Usain Bolt, a three-time Olympian who would win a total of eight gold medals, thrilled and amazed a record crowd of 54,310 by leading Team Jamaica to victory in a record time of 37.90 seconds. His anchor leg was unofficially clocked in 8.8 seconds. The crescendo of noise from the time Bolt entered the stadium to the time he ran a victory lap, often stopping for his signature "lightning bolt" pose, still rings in the ears of those who witnessed the feat.
The latest electrifying experience took place just days ago at Penn Relays No. 128. After going more than 100 years without a single team breaking 16 minutes in the 4-x-mile relay, three – yes, three – teams averaged less than 4 minutes per mile per runner in a heart-pounding finish, and Villanova emerged as the victor in 15 minutes, 51.91 seconds over Virginia (15:52.30) and Georgetown (15:52.56). A total of 13 sub-4-minute splits were clocked in the event.
Villanova's time was less than three seconds off the world record of 15:49.08 set in 1985 by an Irish team in which one of the runners was O'Sullivan, the Wildcats' long-time coach.
"I had no idea," O'Sullivan said of his thoughts immediately after his team's race. "But then it became apparent to me, they were close."
One day prior, another long-standing carnival record fell when Harvard's women's team won the women's distance medley relay. The unit anchored by NCAA indoor mile champion Maia Ramsden clocked 10:37.55, a Penn Relays and national collegiate record, well below the old 1988 record of 10:48.38 held by Villanova.
In his third season as Penn Relays director, Dolan has brought the carnival back almost to the level it experienced before the pandemic. He has made changes in the schedule, one making sure that high school girls and college women "had equal access to each of the competitive days and windows of the meet."
Another change enabled teams to use the infield turf at Penn Park, located northeast of Franklin Field, for warmups. "I think we've been able to hopefully improve the warmups and that kind of opportunity for all the visiting colleges and athletes," he said.
Dolan, who became Penn Relays director during the pandemic, was prepared when competition was allowed to resume. He asked a large cross-section of high school and college coaches for feedback on what improvements could be made and how the carnival could get better. He also reached out to others and invited them to be part of the Penn Relays itself.
"We reached out to folks and we said, 'Hey, we're going to make some new adjustments and we want you to be a part of this, and we hope you'll come and celebrate the last weekend of April with us at the Penn Relays," he said. "It was a big response. It was great to get some of those folks motivated and in Franklin Field."
Dolan also is pleased that the Penn Relays was promoted to Silver status by the World Athletics Continental Tour in time for the 2024 carnival. The higher rank means athletes competing at Penn will acquire more World Athletics points toward Olympic Games qualification and world ranking in addition to increased prize money for athlete performance.
"For Penn to provide opportunities to those world-class athletes at a meet that's now Silver status on the World Tour, it gives them more access and more opportunities to gain those world ranking points through the prestige of the Penn Relays," Dolan said.
At some point, Dolan said he looks forward to the Penn Relays moving up to gold in the years ahead. Until then, the carnival continues to preserve its tradition and history while making moves to enhance the experience in the future.
"The fact that we've had a number of Olympians and World Championship competitors and national record holders from their respective countries at Franklin Field for an early-season meet has been kind of fun," he said. "I feel like we've stayed with a lot of the traditions and maintained what was the core of the meet, but I also think we'll be able to make small adjustments to see if there's ways we can enhance it in the future."
