With the Olympics coming up in a couple of weeks, I thought this would be the perfect time for a three-part series about the state of the sport. After all, this is the one time every four years when people outside of the insular track world actually care about athletics. It would be easy to come up with a list of complaints about the sport; however, I'm deciding to take a positive outlook (on both the topic and my own running performance), so instead I'm going to fix running (and jumping and throwing) in three easy steps.
A New Calendar of Competition
This proposal to fix the sport is going to focus on track and field; specifically, the outdoor competition schedule. Or, rather, the lack thereof.
The current calendar is...a mess, to put it mildly. Once every four years there is an incredibly important global championship -- the Olympics. In odd-numbered non-Olympic years, there is another global championship, albeit somewhat less meaningful. In even-numbered non-Olympic years, there is no global championship. Can you imagine?! Once every four years, let's just skip the Super Bowl, or the World Series, or the NBA Playoffs. Just because. I mean, you know, we don't want to cheapen the appeal of the championships in the years that we actually do contest them.
Outside of that, there is no unifying schedule for the sport. Some National Governing Bodies, like USATF, hold yearly national championships. Most don't. The IAAF does host the Diamond League, an attempt at a collective series of track meets. That series, though still in its infancy, has been plagued by a few major problems: athletes avoiding each other instead of facing off, a confusing and limited points / payment system, among others. (Don't get me wrong though, I do think having the Diamond League is good for the sport.)
Beyond that the rest of the schedule exists as a series of independent and unconnected events. Two of the most iconic meets on the US schedule -- Penn Relays and Drake Relays -- are on the same day! And we expect top athletes to compete against each other? Other track meets (heck, those included) are simply independent events, tied to no other events nor wider meaning.
The current model is an exhibition model: One night only! Come see [insert start athlete here] compete in [event] at [famous stadium]!
There's no context to the competition. There are no stakes. Nothing matters. It's just a stand-alone race -- if the sport's stars even compete.
It's time for Track & Field to follow the model of tennis and golf (similar individual sports) by instituting four yearly majors supported by a season of other minor competitions.
The current calendar is...a mess, to put it mildly. Once every four years there is an incredibly important global championship -- the Olympics. In odd-numbered non-Olympic years, there is another global championship, albeit somewhat less meaningful. In even-numbered non-Olympic years, there is no global championship. Can you imagine?! Once every four years, let's just skip the Super Bowl, or the World Series, or the NBA Playoffs. Just because. I mean, you know, we don't want to cheapen the appeal of the championships in the years that we actually do contest them.
Outside of that, there is no unifying schedule for the sport. Some National Governing Bodies, like USATF, hold yearly national championships. Most don't. The IAAF does host the Diamond League, an attempt at a collective series of track meets. That series, though still in its infancy, has been plagued by a few major problems: athletes avoiding each other instead of facing off, a confusing and limited points / payment system, among others. (Don't get me wrong though, I do think having the Diamond League is good for the sport.)
Beyond that the rest of the schedule exists as a series of independent and unconnected events. Two of the most iconic meets on the US schedule -- Penn Relays and Drake Relays -- are on the same day! And we expect top athletes to compete against each other? Other track meets (heck, those included) are simply independent events, tied to no other events nor wider meaning.
The current model is an exhibition model: One night only! Come see [insert start athlete here] compete in [event] at [famous stadium]!
There's no context to the competition. There are no stakes. Nothing matters. It's just a stand-alone race -- if the sport's stars even compete.
It's time for Track & Field to follow the model of tennis and golf (similar individual sports) by instituting four yearly majors supported by a season of other minor competitions.
The Proposal
Call me naive, but I believe Track & Field can be a popular spectator sport. It once was, and it can be again. It is, after all, a foundational sport: the stuff that all other sports are made of. Running, jumping, and throwing -- we appreciate those qualities in other sports, so we ought to appreciate the extension of human achievement on the track and in the field. The sport just needs to frame itself in a manner that matters.
(This, then, would be the job of an athlete-driven professional association that I wrote about in the previous post: to promote a professional product in which the best athletes in the world are regularly competing against each other for stakes that matter.)
My proposal is this: a series of four "Major" tournaments each year that blend private professional competition with shamateur nationalistic competition (meaning: sometimes you compete for yourself/your sponsor and sometimes you compete for you country).
Each major would have a standardized 7-10 day festival format, recruiting up to 50 athletes per event and replete with a full slate of heats, semifinals, and finals. You know, how we already do the Olympics, World Championships, and USATF Championship. The finals for each event (save maybe the 10,000m) would all take place in a 2-3 day primetime window: Friday-Saturday (with an option for Sunday as well).
Given the large sponsorship opportunities and potentially lucrative television deals, each major would have a significant monetary payout -- not just for event winners, but also those lower down in the fields. Promoting depth of competition is important, because more competitors leads to more drama.
Speaking of drama, all majors would be contested without pacemakers. We want drama. We want unpredictability. Pacemakers only sanitize the competition to a pre-determined outcome. They remove all the drama. Enough of that.
With this new format, the Diamond League would still exist. The collection of independent individual track meets would still exist. We're just acknowledging them for what they are: supporting events for the real important competitions.
Popular international competitions -- World Relay Championships and World Cross Country Championships -- would have a place as well. Think of the Ryder Cup in golf or the Davis Cup in tennis: NGB competitions that pit the best in the world against (and with) each other in a unique, novel format.
We're striking a bargain with sports fans: you don't have to be a die-hard fan (i.e., religiously following Diamond League standings), but you do have to care more than once ever four years. Like golf and tennis, four yearly majors strikes a nice balance.
(This, then, would be the job of an athlete-driven professional association that I wrote about in the previous post: to promote a professional product in which the best athletes in the world are regularly competing against each other for stakes that matter.)
My proposal is this: a series of four "Major" tournaments each year that blend private professional competition with shamateur nationalistic competition (meaning: sometimes you compete for yourself/your sponsor and sometimes you compete for you country).
Each major would have a standardized 7-10 day festival format, recruiting up to 50 athletes per event and replete with a full slate of heats, semifinals, and finals. You know, how we already do the Olympics, World Championships, and USATF Championship. The finals for each event (save maybe the 10,000m) would all take place in a 2-3 day primetime window: Friday-Saturday (with an option for Sunday as well).
Given the large sponsorship opportunities and potentially lucrative television deals, each major would have a significant monetary payout -- not just for event winners, but also those lower down in the fields. Promoting depth of competition is important, because more competitors leads to more drama.
Speaking of drama, all majors would be contested without pacemakers. We want drama. We want unpredictability. Pacemakers only sanitize the competition to a pre-determined outcome. They remove all the drama. Enough of that.
With this new format, the Diamond League would still exist. The collection of independent individual track meets would still exist. We're just acknowledging them for what they are: supporting events for the real important competitions.
Popular international competitions -- World Relay Championships and World Cross Country Championships -- would have a place as well. Think of the Ryder Cup in golf or the Davis Cup in tennis: NGB competitions that pit the best in the world against (and with) each other in a unique, novel format.
We're striking a bargain with sports fans: you don't have to be a die-hard fan (i.e., religiously following Diamond League standings), but you do have to care more than once ever four years. Like golf and tennis, four yearly majors strikes a nice balance.
The Majors
Here's my proposed major schedule. Take it as given that (for the private events especially, but also for the national championships) sponsor regulations and logo restrictions would no longer apply.
- Prefontaine Classic - Because Eugene has shown time and again that it can create drama and pack a stadium with knowledgeable, excited fans. America is also one of the largest media markets, so they deserve a major. And since there are few other track-specific stadiums in North America (which is something else that needs to change for track to become more popular), Pre Classic is the logical choice.
- National Championships - Complain all you want about USATF, but one thing they get right is the national championship every year, and especially in World/Olympic selection years when the top-three finishers make the international team. The rest of the world would do well to copy this format. This major would be used to crown national champions but also to select national teams for the World and Olympic Championships. Not only does this meet create a sporting spectacle, but it also creates domestic opportunities for aspiring athletes -- both of which are necessary to grow the sport.
- World Championships / Olympics - Taking advantage of the infrastructure that already exists, these meets are the epitome of the major model in which there really is something important at stake. Our sport needs to crown a world champion in every event every year. Hosting duties for this would rotate every year, taking advantage of the fact that track is the most global sport (seriously, even more so than soccer: all six inhabited continents regularly have medal contenders, whereas soccer is dominate by Europe and South America).
- Zurich Weltklasse / Brussels Memorial Van Damme - These are typically the culminations of the Diamond League, so this final major takes advantage of their sporting tradition. Again, since Europe is such a huge media market, it deserves a regular major. These two would alternate hosting (Zurich one year, Brussels the next; and repeat) so that the one that isn't a major is instead the Diamond League championship. Both then hold on to their historic place as the end of the track season.
So there you have it: a new Major model for professional Track & Field. It blends sponsored professional competition with good ol' fashioned national competition. By attaching high stakes (in pride, prestige, and money) to a limited number of meets, sports fans are given a reason to care and athletes are given the chance to compete for something with meaning. All the current meet infrastructure would still exist to support the majors, thus opening up more opportunities for aspiring athletes. All told, it's a rising tide that lifts all boats.
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