The upcoming World Athletics Championship, which runs from September 13-21, is one of the three biggest sporting events on Earth, behind only the FIFA World Cup and the Summer Olympic Games. Yet, few people outside of track and field are aware that it exists. Last year, though, something happened that changed that: a huge buzz built up around Eugene, Oregon’s Hayward Field and the athletes competing there. It felt like a real thing, and it wasn’t just about the thrills and spills: there was an authenticity to the performances, a sense of being able to relate to these larger-than-life characters as they gave us their very best.
It was enough to make a casual observer, such as myself, become an athlete fan, for the first time ever. I was hooked. There was something about the precision, the chest-pumping celebrations after each jump and dash across the finish line that set this apart from other sports.
A few years ago, as part of a project to launch an archives department at World Athletics, someone from the sport’s governing body stumbled across some dusty scrapbooks dating back to 1983, the inaugural World Championships held in Helsinki. The rudimentary nature of the official documentation spoke volumes about the state of the sport at that time.