This weekend, James G. Pressly Stadium will once again play host to the Pepsi Florida Relays.
While the Gators don’t typically open the outdoor season at their first home meet – they travelled to Tallahassee for the FSU Relays on Mar. 26-27 – this weekend has historically served an important role in setting the tone of Florida’s outdoor season. With high school and professional races also featured in the schedule, the meet offers a unique opportunity to see Gators past, present and future share the newly-renovated Percy Beard Track.
Before this year’s action gets underway on Apr. 3-4, it’s worth taking a look back at the most significant Florida Relays performances by Gators in each of the past five editions.
2021: Thomas Mardal - 75.77 meters, 1st in hammer throw
Mardal was fresh off an indoor season in which he only suffered one defeat, won the SEC and national titles in the weight throw and set a personal best of 24.46 meters, which stood as the fourth-best mark in national history at the time. With all eyes on how he would carry that form into the outdoor season, the Norwegian senior delivered. He opened his hammer campaign with an eight-and-a-half-meter victory in a personal best of 75.77 meters. Mardal had already earned a reputation as one of the best hammer throwers in the country, notching first-team All-American finishes in 2018 and 2019, but this early sign was an indication he had reached the next level.
He only competed four more times in his collegiate career, but Mardal made the most out of every single meet. He posted an unblemished outdoor record, capped off by a national title victory in another personal best of 76.74 meters. Mardal recorded the four best marks of the competition at the NCAA Championships and became the first man in over a decade to sweep the weight and hammer throw titles.
2022: Joseph Fahnbulleh - 10.22 and 20.22, 1st in 100 meters and 2nd in 200 meters
Fahnbulleh entered his final season in Gainesville in an interesting spot. On one hand, he was the defending national champion in the outdoor 200 meters, a first-team All-American in the 100 meters and had finished fifth in the Olympic 200-meter final the previous August. On the other hand, Fahnbulleh had only raced at two meets during the indoor season, failing to make the SEC 60-meter final and finishing seventh in the 200 meters. The injuries that ailed him in the indoor season were quickly dusted away, as the Liberian sophomore picked up an easy 100-meter victory and finished just .02 seconds behind fellow Gator Jacory Patterson over 200 meters.
Unlike Mardal, Fahnbulleh’s showing didn’t immediately set him on a dominant path to end his Florida career. He didn’t win another individual race until the NCAA East Regional, but he just kept moving forward. At the national meet, he anchored the Gators to a second-place finish in the 4x100-meter relay, followed by a personal best of 10.00 to win the 100-meter crown, followed by a personal best of 19.83 to successfully defend his 200-meter title. When accounting for his share of relay points, Fahnbulleh contributed 22 of Florida’s 54 team points, as the Gator men won their first of three consecutive outdoor national championships.
2023: Alida van Daalen - 58.70 meters, 3rd in discus throw
Van Daalen thrived during her first indoor season in the NCAA, winning the SEC shot put title with a program record of 18.66 meters before placing fourth at the national championships. Despite this success, the discus had typically been her stronger event back home in the Netherlands, so there was intrigue as to what extra dimension she could add to the Gators when her number of events doubled. The immediate returns were expectedly impressive, as van Daalen set another program record at 58.70 meters on the first attempt of her collegiate career.
Since that stellar debut, van Daalen has cemented her place as the greatest discus thrower in UF history and one of the best in NCAA history. She now owns the 17 best marks ever recorded by a Gator, has finished inside the top three at the NCAA Championships each of the three years she’s competed and sits as the sixth-best collegiate thrower ever with her personal best of 66.31 meters. From the moment she stepped into the ring in Gainesville, the Dutchwoman has dominated and never looked back.
2024: Grace Stark - 12.70, 1st in 100-meter hurdles
The 2023 season was somewhat of a “get right” year for Stark, as she built back consistency after suffering a brutal leg injury at the 2022 SEC Outdoor Championships. She looked more like herself during her senior indoor season, snagging the conference title and finishing runner-up at the national meet. On deck for her outdoor opener was a rematch with the woman who edged her out indoors, USC junior Jasmine Jones. The duel was anticlimactic, as Jones hit a hurdle and fell during her preliminary race, while Stark went on to set an early-season collegiate lead of 12.70.
Stark was flawless from Florida Relays on out, not dropping a single race on her way to a national title, the cherry on top of a career filled with the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. Stark’s 12.47-second clocking in the NCAA final solidified her place as one of the fastest hurdlers in collegiate history and helped to propel the early stages of her professional career, as she went on to finish fifth in the Olympic final in August.
2025: Habiba Harris - 12.69w, 1st in 100-meter hurdles
Harris had gotten her UF career underway a week earlier in Tallahassee, but her debut was simply a solid win over a so-so field. In her first home meet, the Jamaican freshman made an emphatic statement in the prelims, running a personal best of 12.85 into a headwind. In the final, she beat Texas A&M junior Jaiya Covington to the line just three weeks after Covington won the indoor national title in the 60-meter hurdles. Now running with a tailwind behind her at just over the legal limit, Harris stopped the clock at 12.69.
Across the rest of the outdoor season, the only woman to run faster than Harris did that day in Gainesville was… Habiba Harris when she ran 12.62 to win the SEC title in May. The Gator was far and away the best hurdler in the country last spring, accounting for four of the seven performances nationwide that came in at 12.80 or faster. An unfortunate injury in the 4x100-meter final at the NCAA Championships forced her to pull out of the hurdles final, instantly ending the chance for a Florida repeat in the event.
Contact Paul Hof-Mahoney at phof-mahoney@alligator.org and follow him on X at @phofmahoney.
Paul is a senior in his fourth semester on the track and field/cross country beat for The Alligator. In his free time, you can increasingly see him jogging around Gainesville or endlessly falling deeper down the rabbit hole that is track Twitter.
