TheETG Position Statement:
Time for Track & Field to leave the Olympic Games
Its been a decade or so since some in our sport, quite wisely in my
view, started discussing the subject of making our World Track &
Field Championships a stand-alone focus of the sport. Doing so by making
a formal separation from the Olympic Games. Achieving this by limiting
participation of Track & Field athletes in the Olympics to athletes
under 20 or 22 years of age.
Perhaps several issues with the Olympic Games is the universe telling us to get on with it.
Too expensive to host. Too expensive to attend. Ticket prices out of
reach of the average citizen of the host country. Fewer country’s making
serious bids.
Expensive venues sitting idle after the Games are over.
In the last 50 years the Olympic Games has been a blessing and a curse
for our sport. The world stage every 4 years was the blessing. The rules
of amateurism and branding issues were the curse. And in the United
States in the 1970s when the NFL, NBA, and Major League Baseball were
reaching escape velocity via sport promotions, branding, and athlete
pay, we in Track & Field were stuck with the Olympics as a
ball-and-chain around our neck. Branded in the public’s mind as a once
every 4 years sport. All narratives being that any athlete training must
be training for “the Olympics”, in the process of being an “Olympic
hopeful”. So attached to the Olympic Games were we that we didn’t even
have a World Championship.
We have a World Track & Field
Championships. Even the first one in 1983 was worthy of being branded as
-the- best track meet on earth. At some point we’re probably gonna have
to end our codependent relationship with the International Olympic
Committee and the Olympic Games. To be a stand-alone sport with a
stand-alone championship. Maybe this is a good time to assert the World
Championships, an event we control, to be the sole focus and stand-alone
Championship at the top of our sport.