The problem with track and field is not the long jump.
To be honest, if you know who Miltiadis Tentoglou is, you are a real junkie and ought to be attending Track and Field Anonymous Meetings. With me, maybe.
The problem with track and field is that it is both anchored in tradition and traditionalists, and while traditionalists love the sport, and that’s all good, track and field is dying a very noticeable death with the audience it needs to resonate with, 18 to 34 year olds.
BUDAPEST – What does it mean to be a winner in the men’s 100 here at the 2023 track and field world championships?
Not the winner. That’s easy. Noah Lyles won the race Sunday night in 9.83 seconds.
But a winner. When you finish dead last. And you are beaming with pride and wonder.
On the one hand, you are hardly Lyles. No, you come from remote islands in the Pacific Ocean. On the other, hold on, isn’t it the truth that you’re exactly the same? There you were, on the same track, running the same damn race. And for your part, you ran the fastest you have ever run, and at the world championships!
BUDAPEST – Some number of years ago, Anna Cockrell was an undergraduate at the University of Southern California, where I teach journalism. At a track and field dinner, she and I happened to get seated next to each other. It was obvious she was destined for big things.
On Friday, at the Team USA news conference before the start of the 2023 world championships, Anna, who is a standout hurdler, was asked – by a non-American journalist – how it is that the United States can keep sending a dominant team even though the sport is “losing popularity” and has essentially no “major support” at home. That is because, as he asserted, not incorrectly, “ESPN is ignoring it.”
Anna delivered a lengthy soliloquy that, for the most part, hit the right notes. (Not surprising. She is, as noted, hugely capable.) At the same time, it also underscored the blunt reality facing track and field as the sport heads into what seems by every measure to be first-rate world championships, what could be the best-ever, here in Budapest.
Meet Yevhen Pronin, acting president of the Ukraine track and field federation. A few days ago, he was at the world track and field championships in Eugene, Oregon. Now he’s back at war, using armed drones to blow up Russian tanks.
Because his mobile drone operating group is so very good at what they do, the Russians have put a bounty on their heads.
In one intercepted phone call, he said, the Russians talked about a specific amount — rumor has it, maybe, $10,000. In another, it was said that there would be a reward, without details.
Track and field has an existential challenge. What the sport thinks it is, and what it actually is, are two different things. Two very different things.
There is a stark disconnect between the romantic idealism that many of its most important international leaders hold for the sport and what track and field realistically can be in the modern landscape, particularly in the United States.
Those of a certain age — this means the sport’s base, the fans it already has — tend to think of track and field as the most elemental exhibition of grace, power and, especially, speed. For them, it is the most beautiful manifestation of the potential of humankind, a primal thing that everyone should obviously fall in love and be in love with.
The disconnect is elemental. Why should young people in our 21st century fall in love with a sport that requires dozens it not more than 100 hours of viewing over the span of 10 days? Additionally, outside of the worlds, you need half a dozen subscriptions to watch everything. Impossible. Dude, come on.
EUGENE, Oregon — Greg Cleary ran track in college at San Jose State. Wife Karmela is happy to accompany Greg to meets. They both think it’s great stuff.
Sons Anthony, 16, and Marco, 14? Not so much. There were 272 NFL games in the 2021 season. Marco watched 230. How many track meets did Marco watch? Zero.
For their summer vacation, Greg and Karmela decided it would be a great idea to bring the boys, and their 3-year-old dog, Justice, a black-and-white Mi-Ki, to Eugene, for the full run of the 2022 world track and field championships. As the meet wraps up Sunday, this one family’s story underscores the many challenges inherent in the key goal of these championships: trying to grow the sport — with an eye toward the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics — in and around the 50 states.
EUGENE, Oregon — On Sunday, the United States won nine medals, four of them gold, at the world track and field championships.
As track nerds knew and organizers helpfully reminded, this was statistically the greatest single-day haul by any nation in the nearly 40-year history of the championships.
On August 31, 1991, the Soviet Union won eight. The previous American best had been seven, on August 10, 1983. Kenya won seven medals on August 27, 2011. There have been 14 times a nation has won six.
The question is: does this nine/four performance move the needle when it comes to growing track and field in the United States? Nine and four are great, no question. But unless this meet kickstarts the sport, with an eye toward the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, then nine and four are just — nine and four. Numbers. Like those in that third paragraph. Stats. For freaks and nerds. Who are already on the I-love-track train.
EUGENE, Oregon — Fred Kerley has an active Twitter account. In it, he explains why he’s very good at running fast.
I love what I do, he says. That’s why, he goes on, I’m confident in everything I do.
To know Kerley is to understand, indeed appreciate, that he is not obnoxiously confident. He is from small-town central Texas, and he has an understated humility. “Track and field has changed my life, coming from where I come from,” he said late Saturday. “Every day I get to run track, it’s a blessing.” All the same, no one gets to be best at the 100 meters, the most alpha of alpha male disciplines, without considerable self-esteem. In that Twitter account, in which he lets the public in, at least a little, into bits and pieces of the real him, Kerley returns time and again to the notion that greatness, by implication, his, cannot be denied.
Athlete mental health is a real thing. To be clear, no one is suggesting otherwise.
It’s intriguing to explore the intersection in recent days of four separate episodes that bear on this fascinating topic.
Any therapist will tell you that matters of mental health are subjective. That is, they’re in the headspace of the person who’s dealing with them. All the same, that person — for purposes of this discussion, an athlete, and more specifically, a professional athlete — lives and works among us. That means there’s some significant measure of objective if not common-sense reality.
