Over the past year most major sports blew bubbles or adopted strict testing protocols in a bid for business as usual. Athletics was different. Basketball, American football, baseball, soccer, and tennis looked much the same only without crowds. But the truly global nature of athletics, with its array of disciplines, training sites, and competitors, made the normal modes of competition impossible. The Olympics were postponed for a year, and to survive in pandemic times, athletics was forced to innovate.
Innovation started in the field. In the early days of lockdown, the great French pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie conceived the Ultimate Garden Clash, encouraging the reigning world champion Sam Kendricks and fledgling world record holder Armand Duplantis to participate.
The three athletes set up makeshift runways in their back gardens, Lavillenie in Clermont-Ferrand, Duplantis in Louisiana, and Kendricks in Mississippi on a patch of land usually reserved for horses. With the bar set at a modest 5 metres, the goal was not height but speed, as the competitors sought to complete as many vaults as they could manage inside thirty minutes.
The Ultimate Garden Clash was streamed live on YouTube to an audience of around 20,000 viewers. Lavillenie and Duplantis ended up in a tie, with 36 successful vaults apiece. Kendricks commented:
‘It was just supposed to be fun, something to eat up some time on a Sunday. Not everybody has the means to do something like this, which is why we got the call. We are professional competitors and we have to find a way to do what we do – and it was a great workout.’
Lavillenie was back in his own backyard a month later in the middle of June, as part of the Impossible Games which were ostensibly set in Oslo. Serving as a small-scale substitute for the scheduled Diamond League, local athletes met up inside an empty Bislett Stadium. Competing over unconventional distances, the home-grown favourites Karsten Warholm, Line Kloster, and Filip Ingebrigtsen set new records in the 300 metre hurdles, the 200 metre hurdles, and over 1,000 metres. Competition streamed in via video link from abroad.
Over 2,000 metres, a team led by the Ingebrigtsen brothers in Oslo faced off against a team led by Timothy Cheruiyot in Nairobi. Competing live via video link, Jakob Ingebrigtsen came out on top, crossing the finish line in a time of 4:50.01, breaking an old European record held by Steve Cram. Meanwhile Lavillenie again battled valiantly against Armand Duplantis, with the Swedish athlete vaulting live and in-person while Lavillenie’s attempts had been recorded a couple of days earlier, once more from his back garden in Clermont.
Taking their cue from the Impossible Games, in July the Inspiration Games placed 30 athletes into three teams over eight events and seven venues. A replacement for the annual Weltklasse Zürich, the meet saw Pedro Pablo Pichardo outleap world and Olympic triple jump champion Christian Taylor, while Allyson Felix held off Shaunae Miller-Uibo and Mujinga Kambundji over 150 metres, all via split screens which stretched from tracks in Zürich and Karlstad to Florida and California.
There were inevitable hiccups. Over 200 metres at the Inspiration Games, Noah Lyles briefly wondered whether he had set a new world record. He crossed the finishing line in a time of 18.90, shattering the mark set by Usain Bolt back in 2009. But in this era of do-it-yourself social distancing, the starting blocks had been improperly placed, and in turned out that Lyles had in fact only covered a distance of 185 metres.
Most of this can-do attitude came from local organisers or the athletes themselves. World Athletics, the global governing body, continues to flag in its attempts to foster engagement, implementing gimmicks which can seem to have a pernicious effect on the sport.
Often these gimmicks seem eager to exploit field athletics, conceived somewhere between a sideshow attraction and a moveable feast. The Great CityGames, the brainchild of Brendan Foster, scored some success over its ten years between Manchester and Gateshead, bringing world-class athletes to city centres in conjunction with the Great Manchester Run and Great North Run. Star names like Usain Bolt, Jessica Ennis-Hill, and David Rudisha put in stellar performances and boosted the standing of athletics crammed between historic buildings, art galleries, and thronging crowds.
Last September in lieu of the annual Diamond League meet in Lausanne, Athletissima put on a city centre pole vault exhibition which wowed onlookers as Sam Kendricks pushed Armand Duplantis to a world-leading height of 6.07. Meanwhile in the women’s competition, Angelica Bengtsson outlasted Holly Bradshaw, Angelica Moser, and Michaela Meijer then pressed on in her pursuit of the Swedish record.
As part of larger spectacles or one-off exhibits, the field events can occasionally thrive against the backdrop of bustling cityscapes. Less convincing is the attempt to incorporate some of these ideas into the bloodstream of the Diamond League. As part of the changes to the Diamond League which were approved by World Athletics ahead of the 2020 season, isolated field events can now find themselves shunted out of stadiums, with jumpers and vaulters forced to take to the windswept streets like carnies advertising the circus.
At the end of 2020, World Athletics rolled back some of its more contentious changes to the Diamond League. In an attempt to streamline the series for broadcasting purposes, ahead of the 2020 season popular events like the 200 metres and triple jump had been scrubbed from the card. This year the Diamond League returns with a full programme of 32 disciplines. Still one format change which debuted last summer in Stockholm has stuck around to bedevil the field events.
In the field from the long jump and triple jump to the shot, javelin, and discus, five rounds of competition now culminate in a sixth and final round of sudden death. The top three athletes over five rounds earn a sixth effort, with their previous scores scrapped and the best performer over the final round declared the winner.
The new format hopes to leave audiences hanging until the last. Instead it demeans the rest of the field, disrupts the flow of competition, and diminishes the chance of surprises. Straggling athletes can no longer save their best until last and leapfrog their way into a winning position. A record throw or jump in an earlier round counts for naught come the finale.
In events like the long jump and triple jump, elite competition is marked by the back-and-forth between athletes, as early benchmarks spur rivals to greater feats of brilliance. With only one throw or jump determining the top three positions, athletes instead adopt an attitude of safety first. Versus fouling and being left without a score in the final round, a legal attempt becomes more important than any push to the limit.
That inevitability reared its head on Sunday night, as the Diamond League season opened with a washout in Gateshead. The first meet of the season had been set for Rabat, but coronavirus restrictions and other sporting postponements led to changes in the schedule. Gateshead stepped up to the plate, but with the International Stadium last hosting the Diamond League in 2010, athletes who made the long journey north arrived to a chilly reception.
Rain lashed track and field and pounded down on the local cagoules and continental ponchos of the couple of thousand hardy spectators. Wind whipped the flags and rafters. The conditions made some of the jumping events especially precarious.
In the women’s high jump, the typically imperious world champion Mariya Lasitskene disappointed for the second time in several days following the meet in Dessau on Friday. The Russian, who will compete at the Tokyo Olympics as an authorised neutral athlete, only managed a height of 1.88, some way short of her usual fare of around 2 metres. World silver medalist Yaroslava Mahuchikh opted out on the day of the event, and her compatriot Yuliya Levchenko finished only in ninth position. That left the Polish veteran and former world bronze medalist Kamila Lićwinko on top with a first time clearance at 1.91, a height only matched by a personal best from Emily Borthwick.
There was more floundering in the men’s pole vault, where Valentin Lavillenie and Charlie Myers failed to clear a height, while a frankly abysmal performance from Armand Duplantis left Sam Kendricks to paddle his way to victory. The winning height was a relatively meagre 5.74. Duplantis made better use of his time protecting Kendricks from the elements with an umbrella. The Swedish starlet and pole vaulting icon thought he had cleared his solitary attempt at 5.80, only for the bar to fall with a little bit of wind assistance.
There was a climactic end to the men’s long jump, as Filippo Randazzo, Eusebio Cáceres, and Tajay Gayle went head-to-head and pulled out the stops in the sixth round. In the sixth round of the men’s javelin, women’s triple jump, and women’s shot however, athletes performed well below their previous bests, putting a further dampener on the evening.
Things picked up on the track. The wet conditions spoiled any prospect of quick times, but the big names still put in sturdy performances. Jakob Ingebrigtsen led the field in the men’s 1500 metres, and secured a season’s best with a winning time of 3:36.27. Mohamed Katir even managed to excel in the men’s 5000 metres, as the young Spanish runner smashed his personal best, coming through in a time of 13:08.52.
Saving the best until last, some of the standout performances of the night came from two of the top British women. In the hotly anticipated women’s 100 metres, Dina Asher-Smith stormed to the head of the pack, beating the multiple-time world and Olympic champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the perennial contender Marie-Josée Ta Lou, and the freshest American prospect Sha’Carri Richardson.
Richardson at just 21 years old has already gone under 10.80 three times this season. Her personal best of 10.72, registered last month in Florida, made her the sixth-fastest woman in history over the distance. At the start of an Olympic push it was Asher-Smith who prevailed, running clear in a time of 11.35 into a fierce 3.1 metre headwind.
That left Laura Muir to wrap things up in the final race of the night, where she kicked away from the field over the final couple of laps to win the women’s 1500 metres in 4:03.73. Muir declared herself ‘really pleased’ with her performance in spite of the difficult weather conditions. Athletics will move on to warmer climes, with the next stop on Friday in Doha.
