World Athletics president insists new, more track-focussed, events on the calendar point to a position of strength for the sport
World Athletics president Seb Coe doesn’t believe that the sport is heading towards “a tipping point” as we move into what looks like being a year of change.
Events such as Michael Johnson’s Grand Slam Track League will take place for the first time in 2025, with the opening meeting in April. It has attracted a host of big names, is generating plenty of attention and is promising much.
However, projects such as this and the women-only Athlos meeting that took place in September are both entirely focused on track disciplines, something which has attracted criticism and in some cases outright anger from field athletes who feel their events are being marginalised.
While many observers might feel that track and field is in danger of starting to splinter, Coe insists that these new additions to the athletics landscape are to be encouraged and in fact point to a position of growing strength.
Speaking during an end-of-year media call, Coe said: “I take comfort from the fact that we now have created, in World Athletics, a platform where people think that the sport is something that is worth investing in. Those are external investments and the market is a fairly unforgiving place. They tend not to put money where they don’t think there is a trajectory or the organisation is moving in the right direction.
“Long before Michael or Athlos came up with this thought, I’ve always been encouraging opportunities for people to innovate, come to the table with ideas and ideally activate around fresh investment, so I don’t see it as being a tipping point. I hope that these events add luster to what we’re already creating.”
Michael Johnson (Grand Slam Track)
Part of World Athletics’ creation is their Ultimate Championships that will take place in Budapest in the summer of 2026. The condensed program will feature 16 track events and 10 field events – all featuring straight finals.
That, too, has come under some fire for the disciplines that won’t be featured and, as asked, about the reaction from some of the field athletes, Coe added: “I would encourage anybody that wanted to invest in that space to do so.
“If I narrowly talk for a moment about Budapest, it’s not really about winners and losers. I’m unashamed about this. This is an event designed for television. It’s three hours over three nights. We can’t possibly put all the disciplines [in there]. We don’t have every track discipline in there.
“What we’ve tried to do is meld the best events at this moment into the right format. It may be that when we come to 2028 it’s different disciplines. But the main point here is there aren’t winners and losers. It’s not like we’re going to suddenly lose those events that are not appearing in Budapest. They’re not going to go from the Europeans or the area championships or our national championships, or the World Championships, or even the Olympic Games. This is very much about attracting new audiences, about taking our sport as mainstream as we can, tapping into people that like big events but may not watch athletics… all of these things.”
World Cross U20 start (Getty)
The sport’s schedule is looking increasingly packed, with the arrival of new events meaning that athletes have more choices to make about where and when to compete.
However, Coe added: “I would rather give them more opportunities than sitting there going: ‘We’re having to scrape a season together and we don’t have the pathways and the programs to choose’. [As an athlete] I had to make a judgment about where I was going and what suited me. I’m never going to force feed athletes into programs that aren’t going to work for them, but I think that I would rather have more events.
“If we want to be a professional sport, we have to do more than be a professional sport from May through to September. We really do have to broaden it. We need to have more competition and we need to be able to do that, not only to give the athletes the pathways, but hopefully to create better financial stability for them.”
Coe potentially faces a year of great change on the professional front, too, given that he is one of seven candidates vying to become the next president of the International Olympic Committee. Were he to win the vote in March, senior vice president Ximena Restrepo, former Olympic 400m bronze medallist, will replace him as World Athletics president.
The man who made such a success of staging London 2012 would not speak about IOC matters on the call, but did reiterate his desire to see cross country added to the Winter Olympic programme.
The scheduling of the World Cross Country Championships is currently under close consideration, with Coe adding that discussions are ongoing with European Athletics about the prospect of the biennial global championships being staged before Christmas – a potential clash with the European Cross Country Championships that take place in December.
The World Cross will next be staged in Tallahassee in January of 2026 and Coe said: “[Cross Country is] a really important part of the endurance paradigm and you’ve only got to look at the way African athletes have used it as part of their overall conditioning to know that it actually works.
“But we also know that it needs help. It needs space and the opportunity to do that – particularly around discussions that we’re having with [the Winter Games of] Paris 2030 and also Salt Lake City in 2034 as the potential for a reintroduction – is part of our focus.”
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