On Friday (07/15/2022) the first World Championships in Athletics begin in the USA. Venue is the little Eugene. The background to the award is still questionable today.
The USA has always been one of the absolute world leaders in athletics. The country has produced great names. Jesse Owens, Carl Lewis, Wilma Rudolph or Florence Griffith-Joyner – the list can go on and on. It is all the more astonishing that no track and field championships have ever taken place on American soil.
That changes from Friday. Eugene will become the mecca of track and field athletes until July 24th. The home premiere, which was postponed by a year due to Corona, raises great expectations, especially among the US stars: “We’re finally home. I’m so excited,” says shot put world record holder Ryan Crouser. “Especially for me, who grew up in Oregon, this will be an absolute highlight.”
Not Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami
The USA is sending around 150 athletes to the home World Championships in Eugene, a provincial university town with 175,000 inhabitants. The choice of host city seems strange, at least at first glance. Six years before the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, it would have been conceivable that the metropolis on the west coast would use the world title fights as a kind of dress rehearsal. Or that the cosmopolitan city of New York would like to adorn itself with the event. Or that the Olympic city of Atlanta would have wanted a major sporting event. But that is not the case.
You weren’t necessarily spoiled for choice, said world association president Sebastian Coe to the “Wall Street Journal”. Accordingly, the big cities were not interested in hosting the World Championships in Athletics. Super Bowl? With pleasure! An All Star Game of the best NBA basketball players? Absolutely! But athletics? No thank you. In order to get interest in athletics in the country to the desired level in the run-up to the 2028 Olympics, future meetings will need to be elsewhere, says Coe: “If I’m being completely blunt, we need to be in LAs, the Chicagos, the Miamis. “
Eugene – capital of US athletics
So now Eugene. Nowhere else in the USA is the enthusiasm for athletics so great. “You could certainly find places on a map that have more hotels, but can you find the necessary people, facilities, funding and experience for athletics competitions? We have that here,” spokeswoman Jessica Gabriel said. In other words, Eugene is the capital of US athletics.
The 30,000-seat Hayward Field stadium on the University of Oregon campus, which was completely renovated for the World Cup, is a regular venue for national championships and the Diamond League. Eugene also hosted the U20 World Cup in 2014. The verdict of the international athletes is also quite positive. “Eugene is a place with a long and beautiful track and field history,” says Olympic long jump champion Malaika Mihambo.
Ominous award of the title fights in 2015
And yet the award in 2015 caused protests. Background: Eugene is where the sporting goods manufacturer Nike was founded. The mega-corporation is said to have been partly responsible for the fact that Oregon was ultimately chosen. It was particularly criticized that the title fights were not even advertised by the world association, which was then called the IAAF. It was fitting that the then and now deceased IAAF President Lamine Diack turned out to be fundamentally corrupt.
I’m very happy to be here. We’re here on a mission.
From an e-mail exchange between Nike headquarters and Eugene’s application manager published by the BBC, it emerges that the current world association president Sebastian Coe had pledged his support to the World Cup aspirant. The Brit was IAAF Vice President at the time and also a Nike brand ambassador until November 2015. Sir Sebastian, who followed Diack in August 2015, vehemently denied any unfair lobbying work: “I only encouraged her to apply again after her narrow defeat for the 2019 World Cup.”
Sporting goods manufacturer Nike hopes for advertising effect
The World Championships should now have a significant advertising effect for Nike, also because the majority of top US athletes are under contract there. In addition, the reputation of the US training ground in Oregon should be polished up again, which had been massively damaged by the failure of the Nike Oregon project, which is known worldwide.
The once-flagship project, an elite running training group sponsored by Nike, fell into disrepute after head coach Alberto Salazar’s working methods were exposed. He is said to have given his protégés performance-enhancing drugs for years. He was banned for four years for systematic doping. Nike stamped the project in 2019.
criticism of the infrastructure
Despite everything, the next week and a half should now be a holiday for US athletics. Crouser, sprinters Noah Lyles and Christian Coleman, hurdle stars Sydney McLoughlin and Devon Allen – the US team will cause a spectacle. The fact that Eugene is by far the smallest venue in the history of the World Cup is accepted by those responsible.
But there are also critical voices about the infrastructure. “It will be interesting to see how that works. Especially when it’s very hot. A lot of the shelters don’t have air conditioning. If a heat wave comes along, that’s going to be a real problem,” says Dennis Shaver. As director at Louisiana State University, he is responsible for one of the best track and field programs in the country and has accompanied numerous Olympians on their way. He also complains that there is no 400m warm-up track right next to the stadium. The existing track is more of a square.
“Changing the US Athletics Landscape”
The Organizing Committee of the World Cup, on the other hand, is naturally convinced that it will be able to organize great competitions for everyone involved. The head of the national association, Max Siegel, emphasized that the World Championships were “a unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change the track and field landscape in the USA”. So that the country is not only the number one athletics nation on paper – but that enthusiasm for the sport also reaches the heart of the US population.