Reece Prescod has walked out on Britain’s 4x100m men’s relay team, leaving them in the lurch just days before the start of the World Athletics Championships in Budapest.
The Guardian understands that matters came to a head earlier this week after the 27-year-old had missed a number of practice sessions during the buildup. And while Britain can still draw on other athletes, the departure of the country’s second-fastest sprinter represents a significant blow to a relay team that has consistently brought back medals from major championships.
At last year’s world championships in Eugene, Prescod ran the anchor leg when the British team won bronze behind Canada and the USA in a time of 37.83sec – while early this season he showed his form by dipping under 10 seconds for the 100m. Last month he also qualified to run in the individual 100m in Budapest, which he still plans to do.
But where this leaves Prescod’s longer-term future is an open question. While his talent is undeniable, his attitude has been queried more than once. In 2021 he admitted he was 8kg (18lb) overweight just before the Olympics due to a diet of Deliveroo takeaways and late-night sessions of Call of Duty, while his commitment towards the tightly knit relay team down the years has also been an area of concern.
British Athletics did not comment when approached. However, it will take some solace from the knowledge that the relay squad has repeatedly proven it knows how to win medals – and overcome adversity – whoever is in the final team.
At the world championships in 2019, the men’s team of Adam Gemili, Zharnel Hughes, Richard Kilty and Nethaneel Mitchell-Blake were able to set a European record of 37.36sec to take silver behind the US despite Hughes feeling a sharp niggle in his hamstring moments before the race.
While at the Covid-delayed 2022 worlds in Eugene, a largely unheralded British team of Jona Efoloko, Hughes, Mitchell-Blake and Prescod ended up winning bronze. That squad gained strength from feeling they had their backs against the wall. UKA’s performance director, Stephen Maguire, will hope for a similar response this time.
Meanwhile the World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, has predicted that the world championships in Budapest, which start on Saturday, will be among the biggest sporting events of the year.
“I think the athletes are going to raise their game there,” said Coe, who will be re-elected unopposed for a third term today. “It’s a big championship and we shouldn’t be shy about saying that. It is the biggest thing that is happening this year. We’ve got over 2,000 competitors, 200 different countries, 2,500 volunteers. We have 10 outside broadcast units, cameras smothering the event and 400 people working on that particular element. We have 300 hours of broadcast over nine days.
“I also genuinely think we’ve got a generation of athletes coming through that’s a lot more media-savvy and more amenable to that than probably 10 years ago.”
