Kansas Relay participants sprint around the track in April, 1956. Many changes have come to the Relays in its history, including the introduction of the Gold Zone this year.

Every year, Kansas Relays meet director Tim Weaver has to answer the same question: Are the Kansas Relays back on track?

After the meet was canceled in 1998 and 1999 because of track renovations and after two decades of mediocre competition and mostly empty stadiums, many wondered whether the meet would return.

Weaver was hired as the meet director and the Relays returned in 2000. Weaver said he was ready to stop answering the question of whether the meet was back.

“This will be the sixth Kansas Relays since the meet was canceled for two years and considered dead by most,” Weaver said. “In my mind, the comeback is over.”

The Kansas Athletics Department has been heavily promoting the Gold Zone, a new format for the meet in which the premier athletes compete from 2 to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

In the past, the invitational races were more evenly distributed during the first two days of the three-day event.

The caliber of athletes competing in the year’s meet certainly seems to back Weaver up. Seven Olympic gold medalists, three silver medalists, 22 additional Olympic qualifiers and seven World Championship winners are all competing in the meet.

Local newspapers have reported that the Athletic Department has spent almost $100,000 to bring in the high-profile athletes, including Maurice Greene, Marion Jones, Stacy Dragila and Allen Johnson, four of the biggest stars in track and field.

But how do these athletes compare to the greats of Kansas Relays lore from the 1950s through the early 1980s, when the meet was considered to be in its heyday? The Jayhawks won several outdoor championships during that time.

The meet has played host to many of the world’s best athletes over the years, many of whom competed for Kansas. There was four-time Olympic champion Al Oerter, who won the shotput in 1956, ’57, ’59 and again in ’81.

And, of course, there was distance prodigy and world-record holder Jim Ryun in the 1960s. In 1972 he came back to the meet, helping to draw a record of 32,000 fans in the stands. Twelve athletes from the Soviet Union came to the meet in the landmark year of 1983. They won nine events and set seven meet records.

Statistically speaking, this year’s top competitors are as good as ever, and there are far more of them. When once Kansas athletes dominated the meet, now professionals are the main attraction.

In the late 1980s, the Kansas track team fell from the top and has yet to climb back. The last time the Jayhawks won a conference championship was 1982. In 2004, the team finished last in the conference.

But there are definitely some Kansas performers to watch this year. Senior Brooklyn Hann broke her own school record in the triple jump on Saturday at the Tom Botts

Invitational in Columbia, Mo. Amy Linnen won the Big 12 and NCAA Indoor Championships this year in pole vault and will go up against Olympic gold medalist Dragila.

Also, the foursome of Jeremy Mims, Benson Chesang, Cameron Schwehr and Matt Baysinger beat out some of the top college teams in the nation to win the distance medley relay at the Texas Relays on April 9.

Recent Kansas graduates Leo Bookman, Charlie Gruber and Scott Russell will all compete in the Gold Zone. Bookman graduated last year and holds the school records in the 200-meter and 60-meter sprints. Gruber, a 2002 graduate, ran the 1,500-meter in last summer’s Athens Olympic Games. Russell made history in 2002, when he was a senior, by becoming the only person in NCAA history to win the javelin and hammer throw at NCAA Championships.

Some of those who saw the greats of the past say this year’s meet could match up pretty well.

“I think this is going to be one of the best Relays in the history of the meet, at least in the last 40 years or so that I’ve been going,” said Del Shankel, former professor and chancellor and a meet official since 1966.

— Edited by Kim Sweet Rubenstein