EUGENE, Ore. — Maybe you are one of those people who believes that Paul McCartney has been, you know, dead for all these years.
Maybe you believe that Britney Spears has thoroughly enjoyed every minute of the 13 years under the conservatorship that has controlled her life and money.
Maybe you believe that the Houston Astros were just learning new syncopation skills when they were beating on garbage cans.
If you are one of these people, or maybe you just belong to the Cult of Running and don’t want to listen to logic and facts, then maybe you believe the new Hayward Field here in Eugene is the lynchpin to a revival of U.S. track and field. And you likely believe, too, that this week’s U.S. Trials, which are essentially a dry-run for the stadium, are a precursor to next year’s track and field world championships that will change everything for the sport in this country.
That ‘Hayward Magic’! Auburn’s Kylee Carter throwing Friday at the Trials. Note the banks of empty seats // Getty Images
So on Franklin Boulevard here, just east of Track Town Pizza, there’s an awesome store. It’s called Eugene OG. It advertises itself as Oregon’s “best and most local dispensary.” Maybe you’ve been into the gummies?
Or maybe Santa Claus is a thing in your house?
The Easter Bunny?
One of the key challenges with the Cult of Running is the Cult of Running. It’s the kind of thing that leads the likes of Let’s Run’s Jonathan Gault — Jon is sitting immediately to my right as I write this, and Jon is a good guy — to have written Thursday, of the action in the women’s 3000-meter steeplechase, which saw a, you know, fall, “It is the reason why family, friends and track nerds across the country make the pilgrimage to the holy site of Hayward Field every four (or five) years. Because there is no other track meet in America quite like this one, and at its inspiring, gut-wrenching best, it makes you feel things no other meet can.”
Does this sound more like an ad for something you might peruse on Only Fans, or the beginning of a track and field steeplechase report? But OK.
Even allowing for journalistic license, come on. Hayward Field is not some holy site. It’s a track and field locale.
As for pilgrimage — no debate there. To get here from anywhere is a trek. From Europe, it takes the better part of a day.
This brings us to next year’s world championships here at Hayward.
In 2015, when Eugene was awarded the championships — we won’t revisit the circumstances yet again — the then-president of what was called the IAAF, now World Athletics, Lamine Diack, said in a statement that the members of the IAAF’s policy-making council “understood the enormous opportunity presented to us to access a key market and have taken a decision in the interest of the global development of our sport.”
Again, now is not the time to revisit Diack’s criminality in connection with other matters, all of which has been laid out in a courtroom in Paris. Nor the FBI’s purported interest in the way Eugene got these championships without a competitive bidding process.
The issue here is what the then-IAAF, and U.S. track authorities, sought:
To grow the sport.
In the United States.
The junior worlds had been held at Hayward the year before. Portland was on course to stage the 2016 world indoors. But the big worlds, the outdoor worlds, had never — never — been held anywhere in the United States.
At that point, Los Angeles and the 2028 Olympics were not a thing.
So this — a senior track and field world championships — was seen as a freestanding event.
With one mission.
One mantra.
To grow the sport in the United States. The global thing was, whatever. Because track and field was already what it was around the world, and especially in Europe, where what is now called the Diamond League regularly features each summer.
To grow the sport across the United States — not just in Eugene, and not just in Oregon.
Indeed, as Diack confessed to the New York Times: “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.”
Six years later, where are we?
Hayward Field is no longer a rickety old thing but a $270-million spaceship plunked down at the same site.
It’s Phil Knight’s prerogative to spend as much money as he wants to build whatever he wants wherever he wants.
For sure, the new Hayward is a recruiting plus for the University of Oregon track and field program.
But the stadium is not without its glitches. The backstretch is windy. It’s not clear, exactly, how it’s going to get built up to 28,000 people for the worlds. There aren’t nearly enough jumbo-screen TVs in place here at Trials, and putting in more would seemingly cut into the 28k available seats. The press work stations are OSHA-violation abysmally bad — if the ladies and gentlemen of the media don’t all have carpal tunnel syndrome and cataracts by the end of the Trials, it’ll be a miracle, and just wait until our European media friends, who tend to bitch and moan at the slightest inconvenience, show up next year.
Moreover, $270 million does not solve the essential problems of staging a world-class meet in Eugene, many of which have been noted in this space before.
Eugene is in the middle of nowhere. Flights are not convenient. Portland is the nearest big city, and it’s at least two hours away — this assumes anyone in Oregon drives more than 63 mph, even in the fast lane, which is a story unto itself. There aren’t enough hotels around. Parking at or near Hayward is all but impossible. Food and beverage service in and around Hayward is, and to be charitable here, limited. Mostly, despite the “Track Town” moniker and the legend of 1970s middle-distance runner Steve Prefontaine, Eugene is — this is the truth — a college football town. Oregon Ducks, baby.
It’s cool, by the way, that Eugene is by and large a friendly college town. People wave at you and say hi when you’re out on one of the many trails by the Willamette River. Even so, there’s small-town charm and then there are the realities of a post-9/11 world. Take a look at this tweet from Sarah Lorge Butler, who lives in Eugene and writes for Runner’s World, and ask — is this a high school meet or are these the Trials?
Accessibility to fans can be one of the sport’s assets; the victory laps here have featured dozens if not hundreds of hugs and selfies. But those were within the security perimeter. Track and field does not need a Monica Seles incident. Just imagine being in charge of security elsewhere and asking how the Americans — the Americans of all people — could allow this to happen.
The answer, probably: because it’s Eugene.
Where the fans are purportedly super-knowledgeable about track, and by reputation pack the stadium, old or new.
Um.
Yes, we are emerging from the pandemic. Yes, the weather has been unusually hot this week in Eugene — 91 degrees on the scoreboard for the second of the two men’s 1500 semifinals Friday, meaning much hotter on the track and, too, in the unshaded eastern seats. But rabid is supposed to be as rabid does, right? So why hasn’t the new Hayward been more crowded?
A view Friday of Hayward from the press tribunes during the fourth heat of the men’s 110-meter hurdles. Note the row upon row of empty seats
Keep in mind that the likes of Noah Lyles, Athing Mu, Grant Holloway, Dalilah Muhammad, Sydney McLaughlin, Matthew Centrowitz, Allyson Felix, Jenna Prandini, Gabby Thomas, Quanera Hayes and more took Friday to the track.
Eugene is not Indianapolis. Indianapolis is an NFL town. USATF is in Indy. OK, you say there’s no track stadium in Indy? They plunk an Olympic swim pool inside a basketball arena for the swim Trials. If World Athletics really wanted to come to the United States, people can get creative.
At the risk of being grossly obvious, if it’s going to be hot in Eugene, there’s no reason not to be in Sacramento. It’s nice in Sacramento in the evening. Sacramento is an NBA town. At the risk of being even more incredibly obvious, these Trials coulda shoulda been at Mt. SAC. See you there in 2024.
Eugene is not Los Angeles. Everything in the United States, especially now, given 2028, ought to point toward Los Angeles.
To USATF’s credit, the federation has been active this past year in seeking to grow new meets without cannibalizing existing ones. That’s a start.
To be clear, it’s in everyone’s interest for the worlds next year to be a big hit. Now — can they be?
World Athletics president Seb Coe was in Eugene at the start of the Trials; chief executive Jon Ridgeon was seen here Friday. Despite some conjecture on Twitter that Coe was here to discuss the likes of Shelby Houlihan, the U.S. middle-distance runner banned after testing positive for nandrolone, that wasn’t it at all. That’s now the job of the Athletics Integrity Unit. World Athletics needs to make sure that next year’s championships are figuratively on track. That means the state of Oregon needs to be on board, and fully. That means — money. Hello?
Let’s consider anew, meanwhile, whether the championships are really devoted now to growing the sport in the United States or there’s another driver. Like, promoting, hmm, Oregon.
Well, if we go to the Oregon22 website, we see this link: “Where is Oregon?”
And: “7 Unmissable regions of Oregon”
On the Oregon22 LinkedIn page, this is how that local organizing committee describes itself: “We are committed to meeting our aspirational objectives and [delivering] an unmissable event that will showcase the state of Oregon and the sport of track and field globally.”
Seems to be something crucial missing there.
There are seven years now — six by the time we get back here next summer for the world championships — for track and field to take its Hamilton-like shot. LA28 is the culmination. Eugene ought to be the jumpstart.
As we head into the last weekend of these Trials, what’s clear — what the 2019 world championships in Doha portended —is that a new generation of athletes is on the rise. From 2008 through 2016 in Rio, track and field was The Usain Bolt Show. Bolt is now the father of three, sometimes doing IOC promo cameos (check out the “Stronger Together campaign on YouTube, it’s really good), otherwise musing about winning a Grammy as music producer.
Do you see Bolt committed to growing the sport of track and field? Right.
That means track and field is moving on — has to move on — without him.
There are going to have to be new American stars to fire the collective imagination, the likes perhaps of Sha’Carri Richardson, the women’s 100-meter champion. Or Elle Purrier St. Pierre, the women’s 1500-meter victor. Or some of those who were on the track this blazing-hot Friday afternoon.
The question is how the world championships next year in Eugene can kickstart track and field in this country.
A start would be by getting the meets after that out of Eugene.