Relay Takeover Zone Interpreter

Whether a baton change falls inside the takeover zone, from where it was made and which relay is being run. The zone is 30 m in the short relays with the scratch line 20 m into it, and 20 m in the 4 x 400 m — and neither figure appears in any copy of the rule book this page could fetch.

The zones, and where each figure comes from

The 2018 change: one zone where there were two

What an umpire actually writes down

Thirty metres, and a scratch line that is not a boundary

This page is about athletics — track and field, and road running — whose competition rules, technical rules and scoring tables are published by World Athletics, the body that was the IAAF until 2019. Where a figure below belongs to a particular edition of those rules, the edition is named beside it, because World Athletics revises them and a number quoted without its edition will be wrong for somebody.

A relay is decided in a 30 m box. World Athletics Technical Rule 24.3 says that in the 4 x 100 m, the 4 x 100 m Mixed and the 4 x 200 m, and for the first and second changes of a Medley Relay, “each takeover zone shall be 30m long, of which the scratch line is 20m from the beginning of the zone”. The baton has to change hands inside that box, and the outgoing athlete has to start inside it. Those are two separate requirements and an official reports them on two separate lines.

The scratch line is the detail that confuses people, and the confusion has a date. Until 2018 the arrangement was a takeover zone with a separate acceleration zone in front of it, and the scratch line marked the nominal end of a leg. UK Athletics’ own rule change summary of March 2018, for rules in force on 1 April 2018, records what happened: “The acceleration zone has been eliminated for the 4 x 100m and 4 x 200m relays”, “These zones have been merged into one takeover zone 30m in length”, and “The scratch line remains in the same place but is now 20m after the start of the zone”. So the line is still there, it still marks 100 m or 200 m of running, and it is no longer a boundary of anything. A change made past it is legal.

Where the boundaries themselves sit is a real question, because the lines are painted and a painted line has width. Swiss Athletics’ current relay data sheet, dated 8 January 2026, answers it: the takeover zones “begin and end at the edges of the zone lines closest to the start line”. The 4 x 400 m is arranged differently again — a 20 m zone with the leg start line in the middle of it, which the same sheet describes as blue lines “10 m apart, before and after the start/finish line”, and scottishathletics’ officials training as “10m each side of leg start”.

Now the sourcing, which is the honest part of this page. Wave 3 of this plugin looked for the relay takeover zone, could not source it, and built nothing. This page exists because a second attempt found it, but not in the place it ought to be. World Athletics publishes the Competition Rules and the Technical Rules as one combined PDF, and four copies of it were fetched: the current official one, the Latvian federation’s copy of the edition in force from 1 November 2019, a school board’s copy of the edition effective 1 January 2022, and an official asset file that returned no readable text at all. The three that did return text each stop before Rule 24, one of them at the opening sentence of Rule 23. So Technical Rule 24 has not been read as rule text for this page at all. What has been read is World Athletics Council’s own Competition and Technical Rule Amendments of March 2025, which prints TR 24.3 verbatim in two columns, current and amended, with the 30 m and the 20 m scratch line identical in both — so the figure is World Athletics’ own words, from a World Athletics document, quoted rather than recalled. The 4 x 400 m’s 20 m zone is in none of those documents and rests on two member federations agreeing, which is weaker and is marked as weaker in the table above.

Two things this page does not do. It does not decide whether the pass itself was legal in any other respect — a dropped baton, a pass not made hand to hand, an athlete changing position at the change are all separate infringements with their own rule numbers, listed in the third table. And it takes the position of the change as a figure you supply: in a real race that figure comes from an umpire standing at the zone, or increasingly from video, and the page has no view on how it was obtained. For the track the zone is painted on, the track lane distance and stagger calculator has the geometry and the rule numbers that go with it.

Frequently asked questions

Related calculators

References

1. World Athletics Council. Competition and Technical Rule Amendments approved by World Athletics Council — March 2025, “(to be in force immediately unless stated otherwise)”, read 15 Oct 2026 from the copy published by the Bulgarian Athletics Federation (bfla.eu); about 10,000 characters, the amendment table readable as text with its strikethrough and colour coding flattened. The single most useful document found for this batch, because it prints the CURRENT and the AMENDED wording side by side. Technical Rule 24.3, current and amended alike: “each takeover zone shall be 30m long, of which the scratch line is 20m from the beginning of the zone”, the amendment adding the 4 × 100m Mixed to the events it covers alongside the 4 × 100m, the 4 × 200m and “the first and second changes in the Medley Relay”. Technical Rule 22.1, current: men 110m and 400m, women 100m and 400m, “there shall be ten flights of hurdles in each lane”; amended: a 300m hurdles added for both, “for 100m, 110m and 400m hurdle races, there shall be ten flights of hurdles in each lane, for 300m hurdle races, there shall be seven flights of hurdles in each lane”, with the 300m column at 50.00m to the first hurdle, 35.00m between and 40.00m from the last hurdle to the finish for both men and women. Technical Rule 22.3, comment column: “The hurdles for 300m hurdle races shall have the same heights as for 400m hurdle races” — but the height FIGURES print as “…” in both columns, so no height is quoted here. There is NO Technical Rule 23 entry and no Technical Rule 32 to 34 entry in this table.
2. UK Athletics Rules Group. UKA Rules for Competition 2018–2020: Rule Change Summary, March 2018, the rules “will come into force on 1st April 2018” (read 15 Oct 2026 from the copy hosted by scottishathletics; the relay entry is about 450 characters). The DATED account of the change, under its own rules 170.3 and 170.19: “The acceleration zone has been eliminated for the 4 x 100m and 4 x 200m relays”, “These zones have been merged into one takeover zone 30m in length”, “The scratch line remains in the same place but is now 20m after the start of the zone”, and, for existing tracks, “Until the old markings are updated the takeover zone will begin at the existing line marking the start of the acceleration zone”. It does not state the old zone’s length, so this batch does not print one.
3. Swiss Athletics. “Fiche technique Relais” (relay technical data sheet), dated 8.1.2026 on the document (read 15 Oct 2026 from swiss-athletics.ch; about 14,000 characters, figures as text, the judge-placement illustrations absent). An independent member federation’s current data sheet. On the geometry: “Les zones de transmission commencent et finissent aux bords des lignes de la zone les plus proches de la ligne de départ” — the takeover zones begin and end at the edges of the zone lines nearest the start line. On the 4 × 100m, “zone de transmission de 30 m”, with the start and end of the zone marked in yellow. On the 4 × 400m, the second and third takeover zones are bounded by blue lines “espacées de 10m, situées avant et après la ligne de départ/d’arrivée” — 10 m apart, before and after the start/finish line. It cites “IWR TR 24.13” for the three permitted 4 × 200m arrangements and names no other rule number. Indoor relays are not mentioned.
4. scottishathletics. “Relay Officiating Training”, a National Officials Training presentation marked “For Official Use”, carrying NO date in its own text and posted in the site’s May 2026 uploads (read 15 Oct 2026; about 8,000 characters, all figures as text). A second member federation, cited for the rule numbers and for the zone lengths it tabulates: “WA TR24.11 30m takeover zone for 4×100m & 4×200m (merged zone — November 2017 change)”, “20m takeover zone (10m each side of leg start) for 4×400m events”, “20m takeover zone — same as outdoor 4×400m (WA TR24.12)” for the indoor 4 × 400m, “Baton must be passed within the zone” and “All athletes must START from within their takeover zone”. NOTE AN INTERNAL INCONSISTENCY, recorded rather than resolved: its table gives the indoor 4 × 200m zone as 20m while its own quick reference assigns the 30m length to the rule it also cites for that event. Its rule numbering (TR24.11, TR24.12) is the numbering BEFORE the March 2025 renumbering, in which 24.11 became the new mixed-relay composition rule.
5. Athletics Australia. “Umpire’s Report Form — Relays”, marked “09/2025 (v2)” (read 15 Oct 2026 from athletics.com.au; about 2,500 characters, the whole form, as text). Cited for what an official actually reports, in World Athletics Technical Rule numbers: TR 24.7, “Baton changed … metres before the zone or … metres after the zone at change …”; TR 24.21, “Began running …. metres before take over zone at change 2 or 3”; TR 24.23, “Jostled or obstructed another athlete in take over zone during relay not held in lanes”; and TR 24.6 and 24.22 for the change itself and for changing position at it. It gives NO zone length for any event, which is why the lengths on this page come from the two federations’ data above and from the Council’s own amendment table.
6. World Athletics. Book C — C1.1 & C2.1: Competition Rules & Technical Rules, the single combined PDF linked from worldathletics.org/about-iaaf/documents/book-of-rules, listed there as last modified 1 July 2026 (fetched 15 Oct 2026). CITED FOR WHAT IT COULD NOT DELIVER, because that is load-bearing: the fetch returns 123,065 characters of readable text and stops inside the Technical Rules at about Rule 5, so Technical Rules 19, 22, 23, 24 and 32 to 34 are NOT in the readable text of the current edition. Its amendment table came through, with effective dates running from 17 December 2020 to 1 July 2026. The page lists C1.1 and C2.1 as one document, so there is no shorter Technical Rules file to fetch instead.
7. World Athletics. Book C — C2.1 Technical Rules, the copy hosted by the Rainbow District School Board athletics pages, carrying amendments approved to 22 December 2021 and effective 1 January 2022 (read 15 Oct 2026). Its Rule 22 hurdle table came through as readable text: ten flights in each lane, men 110m at 13.72m / 9.14m / 14.02m and 400m at 45.00m / 35.00m / 40.00m, women 100m at 13.00m / 8.50m / 10.50m and 400m at 45.00m / 35.00m / 40.00m, for start to first hurdle, between hurdles and last hurdle to finish. IMPORTANT, TWICE OVER: the extracted text is 100,350 characters and ends at the OPENING SENTENCE of Rule 23, “The standard distances shall be: 2000m and 3000m. For the 3000m event, th—”, so the whole steeplechase specification and all of Rule 24 are absent; and in the Rule 22.3 HEIGHT table the column headers came back misaligned, so no hurdle height is quoted anywhere in this batch from this read.