The First World Championships in the U.S. Went Perfectly. But Was It Enough?

With the Los Angeles Games just six years away, the world championships were a chance to attract new track and field fans. But did it vault the sport into the mainstream as officials intended?

Maybe it clicked when Sydney McLaughlin rounded the final turn in the 400-meter hurdles, sprinting virtually alone, out of breath and still flying down the track. The crowd at Hayward Field stood and gasped at one of the best performances in the voluminous history of track and field—the perfect race, in the perfect place, near the end of 10 ideal days of competition.

If track stood to attract more fans, wading deeper into the mainstream sports consciousness, gaining a larger foothold with the Olympics in Los Angeles only six years away, then wasn’t this exactly what the sport needed? Was this, everything that took place in the first-ever world championships held on U.S. soil, enough?

Maybe it was the grand finale to Allyson Felix’s decorated, medal-heavy sprint career. Or her encore, which began after she retired, with a call she answered while eating chicken wings and drinking a root beer float at a favorite “cheat meal” restaurant in Los Angeles. If this retirement holds longer than a few days, she’ll have 20 world championship medals to hand out at dinner parties or decorate her trophy case.

Perhaps it was Noah Lyles breaking Michael Johnson’s 26-year-old U.S. record in the 200-meter dash and ripping his singlet down the chest. Or Erryon Knighton, just 18, becoming the youngest medalist ever at a world championships (bronze, 200), when he could have been catching passes at Alabama. Or U.S. medal sweeps in the men’s 100, the men’s 200 and the men’s shot put. Or the U.S.’s first 800-meter world championships gold medalist in Athing Mu. Or Michael Norman, the 400-meter specialist, nabbing gold after years of disappointing results on world stages. Or Janee’ Kassanavoid, the hammer thrower from Missouri, becoming the first Native American medalist at a world championships, snagging bronze.

After breaking her own world record in the 400-meter hurdles, McLaughlin helped the U.S. win its third straight women’s 4x400 meter relay title.  :: Ben Lonergan/The Register-Guard / USA TODAY NETWORK

It had to be enough, all of it, everything, no? The 1,700 athletes from 179 countries who descended on Eugene, Ore., a city known, more aptly, as TrackTown USA. The more than 130,000 spectators who came to watch them run and leap and throw various objects as far as they could fly. The 10-story tower that loomed over the proceedings, reminding anyone in the neighborhood—and millions watching across the globe—of the sport’s history and heft in the U.S.

The Jamaican female sprinters and their large contingent of Jamaican fans. The 100-meter hurdler Tobi Amusan of Nigeria, setting a new world record in her semifinal race Sunday, then breaking that mark in the final not even two hours later. The countries—Liberia, Niger, Pakistan and Samoa—with athletes competing in finals for the first time. The countries—Peru and Kazakhstan—with athletes who won gold for the first time. The countries—India and Burkina Faso—with athletes who took silver for the first time. The athlete—Kimberly Garcia of Peru—who would have done well as a country, after she collected gold medals in both of the women’s race walks (good for seventh overall, if competing as a nation of one).

Surely, the combination meant something. More eyeballs. More attention. More attention in non-Olympic years, especially. More engagement overall. More world-class meets to be held on U.S. soil. What else would it have taken? There were photo finishes (men’s 100), literal walk offs (men’s 35-kilometer race walk), championship records set, world marks broken, blazing fast marathon times (men and women) and a record medal haul by the hosts.

The Americans nabbed nine medals on the first Sunday alone, and that number might have been 10, had hurdler Devon Allen not been disqualified for timing his start too well. The U.S. collected 33 medals overall in 10 days, or two more than East Germany secured—under storm clouds of suspicion—in 1987. With sunny weather, inviting timing (after the NBA season, during baseball's break and before the NFL training camps cranked into full gear) and youth aplenty, it’s likely that organizers injured themselves doing back flips Sunday night.

Still, was that, all of that, enough? Maybe. U.S. track exists in a strange and distinct place in the overall sports ecosystem. There’s no shortage of accomplishments, no lack of compelling story lines, no day without the kind of drama that makes for must-watch live television. But accolades are one thing; attention those accolades demand, are another.

After McLaughlin raced into track history alongside luminaries like Florence Griffith Joyner, Usain Bolt and Bob Beamon, she sat on the track, gasping for air. “I was just taking a moment,” she said, “to really enjoy what had taken place.”

That moment is now over, and it’s already obvious as to why. Sad but true: What happened at the world championships doesn’t come close to guaranteeing what will happen in the coming months and years. This particular competition—and how well it went for anyone with a vested interest in the sport—only better-positioned track to make a, ahem, run at broadening its impact and its reach. That’s a big “only,” an important, beats-every-other-alternative distinction.

NBC reported that nearly 14 million viewers had tuned in before the final three days of competition. The network said it averaged 2 million viewers the first weekend, the most for any world championships since 2007 and an increase of 159% compared to the most recent WC, held in Doha in 2019.

More is better, without a doubt. More medals, more viewers, more promising young talent. But this is track, and track is cyclical. In a sport where timing is paramount in myriad ways, it’s difficult to sustain attention between Olympic years. Interest rises, then falls. Athletes whom fans want to hear from are more available when fewer want to hear from them. Stars grow old, get injured, slow down. Resources are promised but not always delivered. Participation grows at the sport’s youth levels but isn’t sustained beyond that, not yet, anyway.

So while organizers—and die-hard track fans—choose to paint these world championships as certain to vault track into the mainstream, the reality isn’t that simple. Not at all. It's complicated.

“That’s what we talk about, with the Paris Olympics coming up,” says Jackie Joyner-Kersee, the Hall of Fame heptathlete who remains involved with USA Track and Field and is focused on development. “How do we get behind this and support those athletes in a way that they can continue to grow?”

Joyner-Kersee isn’t speaking from a downtrodden place so much as a realistic one. As one of the biggest U.S. track stars in the 1980’s and ‘90’s, she came to understand the cycle well, especially the counterintuitive nature of it. When she wanted to remain her most focused, with the Olympics or world championships approaching, that’s when every media outlet with a URL begged for her time. She turned down interviews that interfered with training, gauged story placement—was it a cover?—and audience size before saying yes to anything, and worried constantly that the extra stress would break down her immune system, thus impacting the very thing, her performance, that led to so many overtures. But when major competitions ended, she had more time to talk and fewer outlets that wanted to speak with her.

The keys now, she says, are similar to then. Carve out higher interest in the sport overall, so that coverage doesn’t drop off for years between Olympic feats of glory. Invest in grassroots programs, development centers, to keep the country’s best sprinters and shot putters and pole vaulters on the track or field, where they belong. Hold more meets, in more places; show them on more networks; increase pay for non-stars, helping cover travel and training, to deepen fields overall; market the participants’ personalities and backstories, making stars more relatable in more and more and more homes. “Create a continuous pipeline,” is how Joyner-Kersee puts it—and one that will lead to rivalries, competition and acclaim, leading to more of all three, and more of all three, and so on.

“I don’t know what the ultimate answer is,” she says. “But I do think it’s possible. We’re talking about some of the best athletes in the world.”

She’s not wrong. In many European countries, track celebrities live LeBron James–like existences. Meets there draw sell-out crowds. In the first nine days at Hayward Field, of the 14 sessions, only five sold out in full. The tally of “ticketed persons” for those nine days was almost 131,000. That’s neither bad, nor ideal. It’s good, but not necessarily transformative.

The long-timers know to worry, or at least approach an optimistic landscape with extreme caution. They wondered why officials chose Eugene as the first U.S. host city, and not because TrackTown didn’t deserve the honor, but because those who flocked there already loved the sport. They were experts, fans, retired sprinters. They didn’t need to be convinced that track deserved a larger slice of attention from the mainstream sports fan. They already argued that! They already followed the numerous “generational” talents garnering medals for the national team.

Those same people, the informed audience, watched McLaughlin run so fast she couldn’t breathe and understood her performance as an epic one. But even Edwin Moses, the most dominant hurdler ever, told Sports Illustrated that her race would be “more appreciated internationally, because in most countries, track and field is more significant on the scale of various sports in that country.” The U.S., Moses argues, is inundated with professional leagues and television channels that showcase them. When he competed, multiple networks aired his races on primetime slots. For a first like these world championships, only one did. His face graced the cover of sports magazines. His feats ran on the front page of The New York Times; sometimes even above the fold. That was then. But fragmentation rules now. “People are so distracted,” Moses says. “Netflix. Movies. Phones. Capturing their attention is very, very difficult. It’s a totally different environment to break through now. I just don’t know [if it’s possible].”

Lyles broke Michael Johnson’s 26-year-old U.S. record in the 200-meter dash at the world championships.  :: Kirby Lee/USA TODAY Sports

And yet, Eugene gave the track types much-needed optimism, too. U.S. athletes in particular seem to be locked into what McLaughlin described as a “flow state,” meaning ready and running free. They’re young—Lyles turned 25 during the world championships, while McLaughlin will turn 23 next month. Norman is 24, 100-meter champ Fred Kerley is 27, Mu (the first U.S. gold medal winner in the 800 meters) is 20. Rai Benjamin (400 meters, silver medal last week) is 24, as is Grant Holloway (gold, 110-meter hurdles). Knighton, for anyone who hasn’t heard, is only 18. All are prodigious talents, and the list doesn’t include Gabby Thomas, the Olympic sprint darling, who is also 25 but didn't compete at the world championships.

“This new generation, they’re out there showing the world,” says Chanelle Price, an 800-meter specialist who recently retired, in part, due to the number of elite, young talents she competed against. “I hope it’s just the start, because it’s a phenomenal one. I hope they can carry this momentum.”

With track, in the United States especially, all things can be true at once. Were the first world championships held on U.S. soil a smashing success? Absolutely. Did Douglas Emhoff, the Second Gentleman, seek out Lyles to ask the sprinter about his mental health advocacy efforts? Indeed. Would anyone who stumbled upon an NBC broadcast of this competition have been bored? Unlikely. Would those same folks have been enthralled? More probable than not. But will all of that catapult track from the eighth-most-popular U.S. sport to a higher ranking? The optimistic fan might say that it’s possible. Believe them, if you must. Optimism never hurts.

At this point, though, even after what unfolded in Eugene the last two weeks, it’s at best a best-case scenario. One notable track coach, Al Joyner, told SI that “we may never hold a world championships in America ever again, not in my lifetime.”

So, he added, “we must take advantage of it.”

What the sport needs most is the generational talents who are already competing to continue their ascensions, to become crossover stars. For McLaughlin to reach a level of acclaim similar to a Michael Phelps, for Knighton to break more than Usain Bolt’s age-group records. That way any increase in viewership extrapolates well, because the new viewers are more likely to come back.

Al Joyner happens to know one of those viewers well. Despite having Jackie Joyner-Kersee as a sister, and being married to the iconic, late Florence Griffith Joyner, his wife now is not a track fan. She wasn’t, anyway, until recently. That’s the cycle Jackie is now seeking: development programs that yield a McLaughlin, a Knighton or a Mu; unthinkable times run at unfathomable ages … fans that latch on early and stay invested … momentum growing and surging and spreading … until McLaughlin becomes one of the biggest stars in all of sports … and her sport, the one that lacks for little beyond attention and the money that accompanies it, lands the audience it long deserved in years that aren’t Olympic ones. It’s a dream for now, and not all that realistic. But it’s also a vision that’s closer to being fulfilled now than it was two weeks ago.