Truly, we live in times of change, in athletics anyway. Everywhere there’s change. Take-off zones for the horizontal jumps, eliminating fouls, so they say. Measuring the highest point reached in the vertical jumps rather than being restricted by the height that silly old cross-bar is set at. Measuring the distance in the throws only if it represents an improvement.
Those were a few of the initiatives tested at the recent Track Lab (track laboratory, that is. Get it?) in the Swiss city of Fribourg. Not sure how many extra fans poured in to see the boffins do their work, but when the good ship Track and Field is struggling to stay afloat, it’s all hands to the pumps.
No matter how much you change athletics, it’s still a matter of who runs the fastest, jumps the highest or throws the furthest. That doesn’t mean you can’t – nor that you shouldn’t – be continually on the lookout for ways to improve the presentation, to enhance the experience for athletes and spectators alike.
Enter Athlos NYC which, in case you missed it, presented women’s track – the only ‘field’ was the empty infield – in a different format at New York’s Icahn stadium on Randall’s Island in the Hudson River. Six events, six women in each event, prizemoney of $60,000 for first (only the world championships at 70,000 rewards winners more), $25,000 for second, $10,000 for third down to $2500 for sixth.
There was also to be an appearance by the rapper Megan Thee Stallion. Now that would be neither here nor there in influencing my attendance, but I’ll bow to the opinion of others on this.
“The fact that she’s coming to a track meet just sounds pretty insane,” Paris24 100 meters hurdles gold medallist Maasai Russell enthused.
“It’s like the SuperBowl, having someone like her,” US 1500 runner Cory McGee added.
The meeting was the brainchild of Alexis Ohanian, known to big business folk as a co-founder of Reddit (I’ve already used the ‘Get it’ line on Track Lab) and, if he’s known at all to sports fans, as the husband of tennis superstar Serena Williams. Ohanian has dabbled in other sports: he was a founding investor in the Angel City team in the US National Women’s Football League. He seems to know a good investment when he sees one: Angel City is now valued at US$250 million making it the most valuable women’s sports team in the world.
Despite a big-splash launch, Athlos set a modest bar for its first meeting. Chief Marketing Officer Kayla Green, while asserting there was “ambition for this to become something bigger,” defined the focus as “completely executing Athlos flawlessly.”
Icahn seats 5000 spectators, and while geographically in Manhattan is comparatively isolated and difficult to reach on public transport. Nonetheless it looked full enough. The meeting was overnight Thursday (Friday morning AEST). Whatever flaws there may or may not have been were not apparent on the livestream (a hold-up on the start for the 800 due to a technical glitch was assumedly homage to traditional athletics).
As far as the track action goes, it was pretty good considering the late season calendar timeslot. Possibly overwhelmed by the presence of Thee Stallion, Russell (12.44) was beaten into third place in the hurdles by her predecessor as Olympic champion Jasmine Camacho-Quinn (12.36) and American Alaysha Johnson (12.43).
Marie-Josee Ta Lou-Smith won the 100 in 10.98 but another Paris champion was upset in the 200 where Brittany Brown edged out Gabby Thomas, 22.18 to 22.21. Torrie Lewis picked up truckloads of experience and $2500 in sixth place.
In the 400, Olympic champion Marileidy Paulino completed an undefeated season with a 49.59 victory while in the 800 Tsige Duguma and Mary Moraa finished in the same order as their silver-bronze medal Olympic final but this time first and second, 1:57.43 to 1:58.05.
There was a pacemaker in the 1500 metres but nobody paid much attention to her efforts to get the race moving at a sub-four minute pace. It made no difference to Faith Kipyegon, the three-time Olympic champion, three-time world champion producing a 58.45 seconds final lap to ease to victory in 4:04.79 comfortably ahead of Diribe Welteji and Susan Ejore.
And that, as they say, was that. Will Athlos shake things up, you ask. Like the 40-centimetre square take-off zone, no-wasting time javelin measurements and the French Revolution, it’s too early to say.
Further innovations are imminent. Next year brings Michael Johnson’s four-meeting Grand Slam Track project supported by, among others, the for-profit arm of the Professional Tennis Players’ Association (Four meetings, tennis, grand slam. Get it? Get outta here!) and 2026 brings World Athletics end-of-season World Ultimate Championship in Budapest.
The Johnson project will offer prizemoney of $100,000 per winner although full details remain unrevealed. Like Athlos, it will also offer a restricted range of events (none of them field events) while the World Athletics Really Big Meeting will be (almost) all-encompassing.
Against all this is the troubled history of similar projects. Like early attempts at aircraft flight, they tend to get off the runway OK, some manage to stay aloft a while, but ultimately, they crash.
The International Track Association back in the 1970s flew higher and further than most. Established after the Munich 1972 Olympics, the ITA started promisingly, signing many champions and medallists of those Games. But it foundered on the rocks of not being able to lure the prospective champions of Montreal 1976.
Pace Megan Thee Stallion. A lyric from the ITA-contemporary Eagles album Desperado is more appropriate here to summarise the many futile attempts to establish alternate athletics circuits. In the track Doolin-Dalton, the spreading US frontier towns become “graveyards filled with tombstones, waiting for the names.”
Can Athlos, the Grand Slam Project and the Really Big Meeting avoid the same fate? Let’s hope so.
