The sport can’t afford to dismiss new ideas, but there can’t be offshoots without the kind of showpiece platform provided by events like the one about to unfold in Tokyo.
A recurring theme around the sport of athletics at the moment is its plan for survival. It might be, as Japan Athletics Federation president Yuko Arimori called it, “the mother of sports”, but outside of the Olympics it is abundantly clear there are struggles to make an impact beyond those for whom running, jumping and throwing already holds a special place in their hearts.
Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone – a serial Olympic champion, world record-holder and one of the finest exponents of her art in history – recently admitted that, if she is stopped in the street, the conversation “normally starts out with somebody being like: ‘You look familiar. Do you do a sport? You look like this girl. I can’t remember her name’.”
“Athletics can’t keep kidding itself,” wrote Sean Ingle in a recent column for The Guardian, in which he also proposed a very coherent five-point plan as to how it might be possible to start changing the landscape. He is not alone in having ideas about the way forward and the global governing body isn’t sitting on its hands or sticking its fingers in its ears.
On Thursday evening in downtown Tokyo, there was a media launch to celebrate the one year to go landmark of the Ultimate Championships, World Athletics’ brainchild and a new three-day event designed not just to satisfy the appetite of the current audience but attract a new one.
The pitfalls in trying to pull off that trick have been brought into sharp focus this year, of course, by the car crash that has been Grand Slam Track – a project that has seriously damaged Michael Johnson’s reputation and left a number of the world’s biggest stars still waiting for their money.
“It’s great to have ideas and it’s great to come in and try to disrupt the market but if you don’t execute properly you leave athletes stranded in events that don’t really have any purpose,” said Sebastian Coe, speaking on the eve of the 20th World Championships, which get underway in the Japanese capital on Saturday morning (September 13). “We have a great platform to build on.”
The World Athletics President is now halfway through the final term of his tenure. He has two years left in the hot seat and a long to-do list.
“I’m 10 years into this,”…
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