TRACK & FIELD
Looking to Athletics ’ Future
In a Spirit of Sport interview for Laureus , World Athletics President and Laureus Academy Member Sebastian Coe looks back at the successful World Athletics Championships in Budapest , discusses the platform this creates to future-proof and change the face of the sport , and his plans for a final term as World Athletics President . – BY SEBASTIAN COE
The National Athletics Centre in Budapest played host to the most successful World Champs
Seb in his competitive days , here at the 1980 Olympics in Moscow
My competitive experiences of World Championships have been abysmal . I was injured for the first one ( Helsinki in 1983 – Ed .), injured for the second one ( Rome in 1987 – Ed .), and was retired by 1991 in Tokyo . So , I didn ’ t actually compete in a World Championships , but I ’ m fully making up for these omissions now . Budapest was a very special World Championships because it was the 40th anniversary of the first one in 1983 , and it was also the first one that gave me the opportunity from the outset to decide what it should look like .
I became President of World Athletics in 2015 , and it ’ s inevitable that any incoming President inherits already chosen , existing World Championships . Budapest was the first that I could say was mine . The No . 1 requisite was simple . I didn ’ t want an empty stadium . It makes our sport look marginal unless we ’ ve got noisy passionate , knowledgeable fans in the theatre .
Best World Champs Yet !
The World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 were the 19th edition of this global meet and ran from 19 to 27 August in the Hungarian capital city . The nine days of thrilling action saw a record total of 2100 athletes from 195 countries ( plus the Athlete Refugee Team ) produce one World Record , one World U20 Record , seven Championship Records , 11 Area Records and 73 National Records .
The live action was watched by more than 400,000 ticketed spectators from 120 countries , the television coverage achieved record viewership levels , over 14,000 news articles were published around the world , the event website was visited up to 14 million times per hour , and the event ’ s social media platforms passed 11 million followers during the meet . Collectively , this made the 2023 World Champs the most viewed , most engaging and most successful global athletics meet to date .
And that ’ s what we had . We sold tickets to well over 100 countries .
In 1983 , there were about 1300 athletes from 150 countries . This year we had almost 2100 from 197 countries . The field was really strong , and everywhere you look , everybody performed at the very highest level . As President , I have to be balanced and fair , but I ’ m always going to drift towards middle distance running , and I must say how much I loved the season Kenya ’ s Faith Kipyegon has had .
The first woman to break 3 minutes 50 seconds for the 1500 metres ; a week later in the Diamond League in Paris she broke the 5000 metres World Record . She left Budapest with gold medals from an extraordinarily difficult double , the 1500 and the 5000 metres . Very few have achieved it , so for me she is the female performer of the year , and as a Laureus Academy Member , I will be watching to
Exciting races like Josh Kerr ’ s upset win in the men ’ s 1500m all contributed to the most engaging World Champs yet
Images : Christian Petersen / Getty Images , Stephen Pond / Getty Images , Yuriy Somov / RIA Novosti / Wikimedia
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