Inside nearly a century of the historic Penn Relays victory wheel: ‘It’s truly Penn’

Hockey has the Stanley Cup, basketball has the Larry O’Brien Trophy, football has the Vince Lombardi Trophy, soccer has the Ballon d’Or. And the Penn Relays have the wheel.

Awarded to the winners of the carnival’s relay events since 1925, the wheel might be less of a household name, but is older than the aforementioned trophies — with the exception of Lord Stanley’s Cup, which will celebrate its 131st birthday this June.

The round plaque, originally cast in bronze, has become a symbol of the oldest track and field event in the U.S. While the Penn Relays have evolved significantly over its 129-year history, when the wheel’s presentation to winners on Thursday through Saturday will mark a connection between the carnival’s early history and present day.

“It is truly Penn,” said Dave Johnson, who was director of the Penn Relays from 1995 to 2021.

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Each year, the winning team of the college and high school relay Championship of America is awarded an 32-inch version of the wheel. Since the 1980s, though, the wheel has been produced in plastic, rather than bronze. Winners of the other relay events, including high school, Olympic development, and special Olympic relays, receive smaller plaques. Individual winners receive gold watches or gold medals, and all medals bear a miniature version of the wheel’s design.

In all of its forms, the wheel depicts Benjamin Franklin, seated on his library chair and holding an olive sprig, shaking the hands of a winning relay team.

The original bronze casting was created by Dr. Robert Tait McKenzie, who at the time served as director of Penn’s physical education department. McKenzie is considered the father of modern physiotherapy, but he also became world-renowned for his sculpture work.

“I suspect that design by McKenzie in 1925 may be the most reproduced piece of athletic art ever created,” Johnson said. “You count up all the races, all the individual events, and you start giving out a large number of medals.”

Born in 1867 in Almonte, Ontario, McKenzie was a childhood friend of James Naismith — a fellow Canadian and the inventor of basketball. McKenzie studied medicine at McGill University but also nurtured a lifelong love of the fine arts. He got his start in watercolor painting but later developed a passion for sculpture because of his interest in the human athletic form.

In addition to using sculpture as a tool for his research into the human body, McKenzie frequently was commissioned for memorials, monuments, and reliefs, many of which are still on display around the world.

One of his most famous pieces was The Joy of Effort, a medallion created for the 1912 Stockholm Olympics with a relief depicting three hurdlers in action. McKenzie actually was a five-time Olympian himself — in the early 20th century, fine art actually was a category of competition in the Olympics, with the caveat that the art had to be athletics-inspired. McKenzie won a bronze medal in 1932.

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McKenzie sculpted several pieces for Penn, including The Youthful Franklin, a bronze sculpture of Franklin that stands in front of Weightman Hall on the school’s campus today. He also created the statue of mid-18th century preacher George Whitefield that was removed from Penn’s quad in 2020 because of Whitefield’s defense of slavery.

McKenzie frequently used Penn athletes as his subjects in his work.

McKenzie briefly left Penn to join the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War I. Upon returning, he stepped down from his post as director to become a professor of physical education in 1930, the first such professor at any American university.

McKenzie continued his work in sculpture until he died in 1938 at age 70, just hours before gun went off for the 44th iteration of the Relays.

Central to the wheel’s design are Franklin, the university’s founder, and four Penn athletes: Larry Brown, Louis Madeira, George Orton, and Ted Meredith.

Each of McKenzie’s muses had a significant career as a member of Penn’s track team. Brown set the world record in the 1,000-yard run in 1921 and later participated in the 1924 Paris Olympics. Madeira ran the 1,500 and 5,000 meters at the 1912 Stockholm Olympics and later became a trustee of the university.

Orton became the first Canadian to medal at the Olympics in 1900, winning bronze in the 400-meter hurdles and gold in the 2,500-meter steeplechase. He also started Penn’s hockey team and captained its first team, and later was named Penn’s track coach and director of the Penn Relays.

Meredith, who is depicted holding a baton behind his back on the wheel, won two gold medals at the 1912 Olympics in the 800 meters and the 4x400 relay. He was an aviator in World War I and started a coaching career once he returned, becoming an assistant on Penn’s track team.

McKenzie also incorporated classical Greek influence into his design; while the Penn Relays helped popularize relay races as we know them today, the sport has distant roots in ancient Greece. The Lampadedromia was a type of torch race held at funeral games in ancient Greece, either on foot or by horse, in which the torch would be handed off to racers at distinct intervals. If the torch went out, however, the team would be disqualified.

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On the wheel, Brown, Maderia, Orton, and Meredith are all depicted naked, as Ancient Greek athletes competed without clothes and were represented as such on classical artwork. Franklin also is holding a laurel sprig on the wheel; the olive wreaths, called kotinos, were worn by victors in the ancient Olympic Games.

The winners at the 129th iteration of the Penn Relays this weekend will receive something a little bigger than an olive wreath. And they will lift a wheel that symbolizes not only the beginning of the oldest track meet in the U.S. but the beginning of the sport itself.

“When you’re the creator of a new concept in track and field, with creating a meet focused on relay races instead of individual events,” Johnson said, “you might as well hearken back to the beginnings all the time.”