Yemi Mary John’s brilliant anchor leg booked Great Britain a place in Saturday evening’s 4x400m mixed relay finals as the World Athletics Championships got underway in Tokyo.
The British quartet of Lewis Davey, Nicole Yeargin, Toby Harries and John needed to finish in the top three in their heat to automatically qualify, and came second in 3:10.22 behind the United States, after John hunted down South Africa’s Zeney van Der Walt.
Great Britain, who were second-fastest of the two heats, claimed silver in the same event at the last world championships in Budapest, and bronze at the Paris 2024 Olympics.
John said: “Our target was just to qualify, we knew we were going in to have a fast heat, our heat was stacked – three teams who had run 3:09 including us, whereas the second heat only had one 3:09 team. We knew we were going to be the hotter of the two heats so we just needed to go out there and stick to the plan. I think we did exactly that we came top two and we qualified.
“Since Budapest and Paris the relays have been seeing medals and very successful – we’re definitely going to have targets on our backs but that’s what makes it more exciting.”
Saturday evening will also see Scott Lincoln aim for the shot put podium after securing his maiden place in a world final with a 21 metre throw, fifth-best of the morning’s qualifiers.
Cam Corbishley finished 34th in the first event of the day, the men’s 35km race walk, won by Canada’s Evan Dunfee, who claimed Olympic 50km race walk bronze in Tokyo four years ago.
