In the relay race, athletes had a staggered start, which meant that they were not starting from the same horizontal line. Athletes in inner lanes had their starting positions in the back, while runners in outer lanes had forward starting positions. To the ordinary audience, before the athletes entered the last 100m straightaway, they could hardly tell who was running faster.
Luckily, there was something called the exchange zone, which helped judge who ran faster. The distance from each athlete's starting line to the exchanging zone was the same, so whoever stepped into the exchange zone first was the faster runner. Likewise, athletes who left the zone first took the lead in the race.
Guohong Niu was the first to arrive at the exchange zone, which indicated that he was the fastest runner among the first legs. However, since he was the first leg, the national team's advantage was not obvious yet.
