We take you back to the halcyon days of 2015, when Eugene, Oregon, that college town in the middle of nowhere, was abruptly awarded — without the usual formal competitive bid process — the 2021 world track and field championships.
The United States has never staged the outdoor track worlds. The international governing body, then called the IAAF, now known as World Athletics, has always been keen to have it in the States. The soon-to-be-outgoing IAAF president, Lamine Diack, and the president of USA Track & FIeld, Vin Lananna said the stars aligned, Lananna calling the awarding of the 2021 championships a unique “one-time opportunity.”
Diack is now under house arrest in France, the focus of a criminal inquiry into a wide array of track- and Olympic-related matters. U.S. Justice Department officials, meanwhile, are reported to have taken an interest into the awarding of the Eugene bid.
But wait.
The whole idea of staging the track worlds (in Eugene) was to grow the sport in the United States.
As Lananna said at the time:
“The entire, entire basis of our bid was to grow the sport. We believe hosting the world championships in the United States has the potential of reigniting Americans’ passion for track and field.”
Diack, let’s recall, told the New York Times in a telephone interview from Beijing, where the IAAF Council approved the plan, “We had to make a strategic decision, and to go to the United States is very important for us. I hope the Americans are going to discover that track and field is not just the Olympic trials and the Olympic Games.”
Artist’s rendering of the new Hayward Field // University of Oregon
So, with the announcement Wednesday from World Athletics of new dates for the 2021 worlds because of the coronavirus epidemic, to July 15-24, 2022, let’s revisit.
Because those dates are not only a missed opportunity but thoroughly undercut the entire premise of having the worlds in the United States. Indeed, the announcement shows, and vividly, that track and field is still European, and to the core.
You want to grow Olympic or international sport in the United States?
From 2020 through 2028 every opportunity in the United States — every single one — ought to be taken to showcase Olympic and international sport with the end game the Summer Games in Los Angeles.
The situation we are in now because of the virus is of course unprecedented. But there will be, at some point, resolution, and a resumption of life, and sport. Many things will be uncertain. But not this, because this is a certainty: the 2028 Games will revolutionize the Olympics just as the 1984 Games did.
Track and field had a golden opportunity in the United States. Already nearly five years have passed by. And now, because of this decision for 2022 — yes, of course, a multiplicity of factors had to be considered and all stakeholders were never going to be satisfied but all the same — these worlds would now seem more likely than not to squander, and grossly so, this opportunity.
These worlds are still in Eugene. Got it. Yes, there’s a new Hayward Field, now under construction, and if that was the plan — the only plan — all along, to leverage the worlds as an infrastructure play for a track and field stadium, then that’s one consideration. But these constants remain: Eugene is still hard to get to, and still a college town where college football is the No. 1 game in town.
Lananna, arguably Eugene’s biggest booster: now in Charlottesville, Virginia. You might ask around certain circles in Eugene to find out why.
The dates — mid-July?
Right around the traditional time of Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game?
And, big picture, in the middle of the summer? What big-time sport holds its marquee purportedly end-of-year championship in the middle of July?
Answer: no one.
Not even track and field.
Traditionally, track holds its worlds later in the summer, in August (which is another matter altogether). Indeed, the Eugene championships had originally been set for Aug. 6-15, 2021.
The 2022 world dates — again, for convenience, July 15-24 — were chosen to avoid clashing with, in turn, the:
2022 Commonwealth Games, in Birmingham, England, July 27-Aug. 7, and the
2022 European track and field championships, in Munich, Aug. 15-21.
The Munich event will seek to promote a tie to the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Summer Games.
At any rate, make no mistake. This is all about being able to compete in all three — if athletes are so eligible.
Which automatically figures to exclude, you know, Americans, who, in all, took home a total of 29 medals, best in the world, at the Doha 2019 championships.
This completely demeans, belittles and undercuts the entire point of having the worlds here in the United States in the first instance. Because the point is not to grow the sport in the United States. It’s, for those athletes who are eligible, the 2022 triple.
Putting lipstick on a pig, World Athletics president Seb Coe said in a news release, “This will be a bonanza for athletics fans around the world.
“They will be treated to six weeks of absolutely first-class athletics,” which is absurd, because for starters Christian Coleman is the Doha 100-meter champion and Gatlin the silver medalist (and 2017 winner), Noah Lyles the 200 gold medalist and the anchor of the gold medal-winning U.S. 4x1 relay, and to not have any of those three guys in your event automatically makes it not first-class.
“More than 70 of our Member Federations are part of the Commonwealth,” and perhaps more important the British press covers that event, “and more than 50 our member Federations are European,” and here we have the gut of it because the Diamond League schedule is heavily European and the European championships are traditionally the second-most important meet in the world after the worlds, and let’s be real, “so our guiding principle in rescheduling the World Championships was to ensure enough space was created around the centerpiece World Athletics Championship for athletes to choose other major events to compete in.
“We were also very mindful that we did not want to damage the other major championships in 2022 because they are also very important to our sport.
“We believe we have found a solution that will allow athletes who are eligible for the other two events to compete in them with the Commonwealth Games Federation planning to stage the athletics program toward the end of their event. This will showcase our sport to its best advantage in the circumstances and we will continue collaborating with all competitors on the detailed programming.
“We would not have chosen to have three major championships back-to-back but it will give us a unique opportunity to promote our sport and its stars around the globe over a six-week period.”
Soooo — what about growing the sport in the United States? What about, you know, that?
To get a sense of the importance the London-based press plays in all this, it was six days ago that the Guardian shared with its readers this headline above a story from my friend and colleague Sean Ingle, referring to the British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith, the Doha 2019 200-meter gold medalist: “Three championships in 2022 offers Asher-Smith treble chance says Coe”
Back to the World Athletics release, because what’s so interesting in these sorts of things is not only what is said but what is not.
What else got said — this from Niels de Vos, executive director of the Oregon championships, who track geeks will recall was in a past life the head of the 2017 London IAAF championships and, before that, the former head of UK Athletics: “Oregon 22, as we must now get used to calling it, will be kickstarting a global festival of international track and field championships in the summer of 2022 that will be a fantastic experience for athletes and fans alike.”
Nowhere in that World Athletics release can be found any voice from anyone in the U.S. track and field firmament.
For that, you’d have to go to the USA Track & FIeld release, issued separately.
The enthusiasm there all but leaps off the page. Or not. You decide.
“USATF worked diligently with all the key stakeholders to find a suitable date for rescheduling,” said USATF CEO Max Siegel. “Postponing to 2022 will allow us even more time for the world’s best athletes to descend on Eugene, Oregon. We appreciate the alliance of all partners including World Athletics, the local organizing committee and the state of Oregon.”