When he received the baton on the course around King's High School, John McGlashan was in fourth place.
Batchelor, inspired by the deeds of his coach, Lindsay Dey, who was part of the Otago University Lovelock Relay record-breaking team 40 years ago, took off like a whippet and hit the front after 800m of the final 2000m lap.
The McGlashan team of Joe Beamish, Bennett Jones, Zeb Leqkora and Batchelor won the four-lap race in 23min 12sec from King's in 23min 33sec and Otago Boys' High School in 24min 24sec.
Batchelor had the fastest lap time of 5min 25sec from Michael Ogle (Otago Boys') and Ben Jowsey (Kaikorai Valley) who shared second place with 5min 32sec.
The Otago Boys' team of Hamish Cooper, Ben Wardhaugh, Chris McNoe and Ross Campbell won the junior boys race in 24min 10sec. They were leading the combined boys race after three laps.
In a major upset, the Otago Girls' High School team of Katrina Andrew, Rosie Duffy, Mary Gray and Anna Keen won the senior girls race in 25min 25sec from St Hilda's Collegiate School in 26min 12sec and Columba College in 27min 33sec.
Otago Girls' led Columba by 40sec after three laps with St Hilda's in third .
Rebekah Greene (St Hilda's) ran the fastest time of 5min 40sec from Keen in 5min 41sec with Caitlin O'Brien (St Hilda's) third in 6min 08sec.
The Columba team of Hanna English, Charlotte Cahill, Grace Carruthers and Olivia Wilson won the junior girls race in 27min 06sec. English ran the fastest time of 6min 37sec.
The AWD race was won by the Sara Cohen team of Ricky White, David Takerei and Robert Larsin Hewitt in 24min 56sec. White ran the fastest lap time in 6min 47sec from Ben Richardson (King's) in 6min 48sec and Tony Bryant (King's) in 7min 23sec.
