The strategy behind Olympic swimming's new, must-see event: mixed 4x100-meter medley relay

Trust us: You're not going to want to miss this race.

The Tokyo Olympics feature three new events in the pool: the women’s 1,500-meter freestyle, the men’s 800-meter freestyle and the 4×100-meter mixed medley relay. Americans Katie Ledecky dominated the 1,500 while Bobby Finke pulled off an incredible comeback to win the 800.

But the 4×100 mixed medley relay’s final is set for Saturday morning in Tokyo and Friday night in the U.S., and this new Olympic event could end up being the best and most fun relay in the pool. This event is already part of the world championships’ lineup, and based on prelims earlier this week, the final is going to be a wild, must-see race.

The medley relay features 100s of backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle – in that order — and for the mixed medley relay, two men and two women in any order will tackle the legs.

And how coaches put together what they believe is the best combination of swimmers involves a ton of strategy.

“We’re looking at a lot of data points to help us make the best decision to help that relay get on the podium and hopefully win gold for the U.S.,” Team USA’s men’s head coach Dave Durden said earlier this month at Olympic training camp.

Teams will have to weigh their best specialized swimmers against the most advantageous order based on gender — all while considering what lineup their competitors might put forth.

Check out the relay from 2019 world championships, via NBC Sports:

In prelims at the Tokyo Games, Team USA’s lineup had Regan Smith swimming backstroke, Michael Andrew doing breaststroke, Tom Shields on butterfly and Abbey Weitzeil anchoring with freestyle. The team finished second with a time of 3:41.02 in its heat to Great Britain — which broke the Olympic record with a 3:38.75 race — and the two teams are seeded 1-2 going into the final.

However, lineups are likely to change for the final, and Team USA’s mixed medley relay final could include Caeleb Dressel, Lydia Jacoby or Ryan Murphy. (SwimSwam broke down the many, many options for how the American relay team could look.)

Durden continued explaining how he and Team USA’s women’s coach Greg Meehan will determine the final lineup:

“There’s a lot of math that goes into some of those decisions, but there’s also some environmental circumstances that we’re looking at: Who we’re swimming next to, where we’re swimming in heats, where we’re swimming — knock on wood — potentially, into the finals, how our athletes are moving through the front half of the meet.

“So there’s that and looking at the event orders at those particular sessions and making sure that we’re prepping people or we’re swimming people in the right way that’s not impacting their individual swims but also helping us as Team USA win a gold medal.”

So when will fans know who exactly is on Team USA’s mixed medley relay team? Likely not too long before the final itself.

Meehan explained:

“An hour before the end of the session, we’ll have a relay card turned in that’ll be the plan that’s communicated externally. The one nice thing about where the mixed medley falls — somewhat similar to the respective men’s medley [and] women’s medley [relays] — is it’s on the tail end of the meet, and we’ll have seen a lot of things at that point.

“We’ll have seen most of the hundreds of stroke and 100 freestyles, and so we’ll have a good sense of where everybody is and just utilize that — along with all the things that Dave mentioned — to put together those four individuals … at night prelims who are going to help Team USA make the final a day and a half later.

“And then for those four who are going to be on it at finals to go compete for a gold medal, we’re just going to kind of simplify from that.”

Joining the U.S. and Great Britain in the 4×100 mixed medley relay final are China, Australia, Italy, Netherlands, the Russian Olympic Committee and Israel.

The final is scheduled for about 11:45 a.m. Saturday morning in Japan, which is about 10:45 p.m. ET. Trust us: You’re not going to want to miss this race.