Track and field has an existential challenge. What the sport thinks it is, and what it actually is, are two different things. Two very different things.
There is a stark disconnect between the romantic idealism that many of its most important international leaders hold for the sport and what track and field realistically can be in the modern landscape, particularly in the United States.
Those of a certain age — the sport’s base, the fans it already has — tend to think of track and field as the most elemental exhibition of grace, power and, especially, speed. For them, it is the most beautiful manifestation of the potential of humankind, a primal thing that everyone should obviously fall in love and be in love with.
The disconnect is elemental. Why should young people in our 21st century fall in love with a sport that requires dozens it not more than 100 hours of viewing over the span of 10 days? Additionally, outside of the worlds, you need half a dozen subscriptions to watch everything. Impossible. Dude, come on.
Hayward Field at 7:50 p.m. Friday, moments before Sydney McLaughlin ran to a 50.68 world record, the athletes in the women’s 400-meter hurdles about to step into the blocks — note the (as usual) empty seats in the east stands
Rather than trying to get people, especially teens and 20-somethings, to fall iln love with the sport as it is, track and field needs to become something that is, in a word, fall-in-loveable.
This is not so much a marketing problem as it is a structure problem.
World Athletics, the former IAAF, is fond of noting that a world championships, like Oregon22, which wrapped up Sunday in Eugene, is one of the top three sports events on Planet Earth, behind only the Summer Olympics and the men’s soccer World Cup.
To that end, it tends to put the track and field championships in huge stadiums, assuming capacity crowds. This has not proven the case, except in London in 2017 and Berlin in 2009.
It wasn’t even the case in Eugene, where capacity was more or less 12,000.
Things have to change.
Think of how everything else has changed, especially media consumption. Shorter news articles. Quicker cuts in TV and movies. Faster-paced plots. But the schedule for track and field keeps plodding along.
Things — they have to change.
Track and field remains the anchor sport of the Olympics. But consider:
Aquatics now awards more medals, 49. Track and field, 48.
In the United States, TV numbers for gymnastics kill track and field. It’s not even close.
The signs are all there. Track remains that anchor sport. But for how long? Basketball and volleyball are chasing, and fast.
International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach’s mantra is change or be changed. Sooner or later — and devoted fans do not want to hear it, but the truth is it’s going to be sooner — it’s going to get ugly for track and field if it doesn’t start changing. Better to change yourself than have changed imposed on you. So:
— Ten days for the world championships is entirely too long. It should be cut to four. The U.S. nationals are four.
— The size of the fields at the meet has to be cut significantly. This can be accomplished by regional or area qualifiers. If this means that the entourage numbers are cut, too — bonus.
— A bunch of events have to go. This is the blunt truth. Race walks? Bye. If the race walkers want to have a separate championship, fine. Marathons? Bye. Same. Not sure that triple jump needs to stay on the program at all. Brutal, sure, but this is 2022, not 1976 or 1984. Cuts have to be made.
— Field events need to be separated from the track events. Either 1/ there needs to be a day devoted solely to the field events or 2/ they need to be spread around the championship locale, the way shot put has been at the state capitol in Sacramento, or a town square in Stockholm, even at ancient Olympia at the 2004 Athens Games. Pole vault has been in the Zurich train station. More of the same.
Do not be surprised if something like this — field events around and about — happens at the LA 2028 Games. Things need to change.
— The distance events have to be re-thought entirely. If this means some athletes are not going to double, so be it. Emil Zatopek is a great, great champion. He also did his thing in 1952. Lasse Virén? 1972, 1976. So, either 1/ the distance events become road races and-or 2/ in a four-day meet, Thursday night is distance night and that is the one night, and one night only, devoted to the distance events.
— If Thursday night is distance night, Friday night is field night, the weekends are for speed.
— Each session but especially each night at the track needs to be two hours. Max.
— There needs to be music and a party atmosphere at the track and in the championship city. The track meet should be part of a festival — trackapalooza. The hottest bands or acts should be brought to perform after each night’s meet, and tickets to the meet should guarantee fans admission to the show, just the way tickets to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City guaranteed admission to the band and the party each night in 2002.
In Eugene, Nowheresville proved Deadsville each night. Dead. Track and field is night work. The medals ceremonies ended at about 8. After doing what journalists do, I walked over to Bill & TIm’s Barbecue & Tap House, at East 13th Avenue and Pearl Street, intending to show off for some French journo friends the glories of American barbecue and craft beer. I got there at 9:10 p.m. We’re closed, I was told — shut at 9.
Who closes at 9 o’clock on a Friday night when a world championship meet is in town? Are you kidding?!
I could have sworn the entire point, at least from the state’s perspective, was to promote tourism in and around Oregon. That’s why the state, with some help from the feds, spent $40 million on this meet. The tagline for this event was “Hello, World. Meet Oregon.” What a joke.
— Track and field is the athletic version of performance art. This is why Noah Lyles is perhaps the one athlete in American track and field who totally gets it. The athletes are performers. They are also social media influencers.
Athletes — you are independent contractors. It’s on you to make money for yourselves. Just like in the changing world of journalism, it’s on us, journalists who work for ourselves, to figure out how to make money for ourselves. Some unsolicited tips for you track and field athletes: Have a personality, especially on television. Smile for the camera. Make yourself available to journalists (hint: can’t tell you how difficult/challenging it was for many in the media to get an interview with any of you over the past six months) or tell your own story on social media.
— The sport, meaning athletes, officials, everybody, needs to burst out of its track-only bubble and find ways to cross over into the mainstream. Citius magazine put out a self-congratulatory tweet on Monday thanking its team fof the “most comprehensive coverage that the sport and the athletes deserve.” By 6:55 p.m. Tuesday, it had garnered all of 403 likes.
— Once the product is fine-tuned, fans: you need to be willing to pay to consume it, the same way you would for movies, concerts, Dave & Busters. It’s entertainment. See trackapalooza.
— A separate topic, and one to be addressed in greater depth down the line. The financial model of all of this has to change. It’s imperative that track and field move away from a model in which shoe companies underwrite the sport. If you haven’t been paying attention to what’s been going on with venture capital money and beach volleyball, maybe now is the time; that reported $300 million is a lot of money.
In a perfect world, this meet in Eugene would have been in Los Angeles — where this past week saw the baseball All-Star Game and the ESPYs.
Imagine LeBron James, Steph Curry and some random Kardashian front row for the men’s 100 at the LA Coliseum.
Would the Coliseum, track and field’s true spiritual home in the United States, have been filled to capacity? Probably not.
But would there be buzz? You bet.
And that — that — is what track needs.