BATON ROUGE – Fans were treated to a record-breaking New Balance Indoor Grand Prix on Saturday at the Reggie Lewis Center in Boston as former LSU All-American Richard Jones led off a team of U.S. All-Stars that broke the 14-year-old world indoor record in the men’s 4×800-meter relay that was set in 2000 on the same track in the same meet.
After leading off the team with a split of 1 minute, 51.00 seconds, Jones gave way to David Torrence (1:47.46), Duane Solomon (1:47.98) and Erik Sowinski (1:46.66) as they combined for a new indoor world record time of 7:13.11, breaking the previous mark of 7:13.94 set 14 years ago by the Global Athletics & Marketing team.
Jones and the U.S. All-Stars finished a split-second ahead of runner-up New Jersey-New York Track Club, which also broke the previous world-record time with their new American record of 7:13.22. The team from NJ-NYTC is the recognized American record holders in the event as all members of a relay team breaking an American record must be members of the same recognized track club.