Texas Relays crowd (© University of Texas)
Plaque name: The Clyde Littlefield Texas Relays
Location: 2011 Robert Dedman Dr., Austin, TX 78712, United States
Plaque awarded: 24/03/2025
Reason: Plaque Category – Competition
The meeting was the inspiration of Clyde Littlefield, the head track and field coach at The University of Texas from 1920 to 1961. As a student Littlefield was an impressive sportsman at American football, basketball and in track and field athletics as a sprinter and hurdler.
On 27 March 1925, Littlefield founded the Texas Relays with the university’s athletic director Theo Bellmont, who had led the drive to build the Memorial Stadium which opened the previous year and hosted the inaugural meeting. That stadium was to remain the meeting’s home until 1999 when the Mike A. Myers Stadium was opened. The Texas Relays began as a men’s only event and it wasn’t until 1963 that women's events were added to the programme.
Famously, in the 1977 edition, Montreal Olympic 4x100m relay gold medallist John Wesley Jones recorded a time of 9.85 in the 100m which would have been a world record had the electronic timing system, introduced that year, not malfunctioned.
The Texas Relays have always drawn the best sprinters to Austin; Bobbie Morrow, Carl Lewis, Michael Johnson, Maurice Greene, Merlene Ottey and most recently Julien Alfred and Gabrielle Thomas to name but a few.
Similarly, the infield has been graced by numerous Olympic and world champions and world record-breakers from throwing giants such Al Oerter, Randy Matson, Ryan Crouser and Valarie Allman, to vaulting aces Mondo Duplantis and Jenn Suhr, who hold current meeting records.
Two ratified world records in Olympic standard events have been set at the meeting: USA’s Bill Nieder with 19.99m in the shot put on 2 April 1960 and Sweden’s Kjell Isaksson who pole vaulted 5.51m on 8 April 1972.