World Athletics Ultimate Championship: How did the inaugural event go? – BBC Sport
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Athletics: Results | Calendar
How did the first Ultimate Championship go?
Image source: EPA/Shutterstock
Image caption: Josh Kerr pocketed $150,000 after becoming Great Britain’s first Ultimate champion
By Harry Poole, BBC Sport journalist
Published 12 minutes ago
As poster boy Armand Duplantis performed the Ultimate Championship’s official song and fireworks lit up the sky above the newly crowned winners, athletics had taken its first strides in a new direction.
Across three fast-paced evenings, the inaugural event played out in Budapest, where a record $10m (£7.4m) prize pot was distributed among the sport’s biggest stars.
It looked different. It felt different. And, after three successive sell-out crowds and positive feedback from the athletes, it appears it is here to stay.
"It’s a good first step towards changing track and field for the better," said Usain Bolt, event ambassador and the greatest sprinter in history. "The athletes are loving it. It’s a different energy, a different vibe."
World Athletics and its president, Lord Coe, worked for three years to tackle the absence of a season-ending pinnacle event. Rather than keeping to an established formula, the Ultimate Championship was a bold, innovative undertaking – and it is hoped it can exist as a testing ground to help shape the sport’s future.
"We walked out, we came through the little starlights and we all looked at each other and said, ‘this is unbelievable’," Britain’s four-time global relay medallist Imani-Lara Lansiquot told BBC Sport. "It’s so rare that things really live up to the expectation, the hype. I’m so, so glad, having been in this sport for many years now, to actually see us be put on a platform and celebrated in this way."
Athletics has long grappled with the issue of maintaining the interest and excitement which it generates at the Olympics throughout the rest of those four-year cycles. The structure of the season has not always been clear for occasional viewers, while showdowns between the world’s top athletes can be inconsistent. From a storytelling perspective, that is far from ideal.
They are all issues World Athletics has sought to begin addressing with the biennial Ultimate Championship, while also compensating the athletes with record prize money.
The premise is accessible: condensed, fast-paced sessions, with the best competing against the best for a global title and significant prize money.
A striking new appearance and several innovative features ensured the Ultimate Championship provided a notably different feel to that of the sport’s established global championships. An infield painted black sought to focus attention on the illuminated live events, while the horizontal jumps were decided in a bright pink sandpit.
A new trophy waited for the winners on a plinth, with their crowning moment marked by sparklers and celebratory music. New features for TV audiences attempted to enhance the viewer experience, with athlete headshots, win probabilities and projected finishing positions flashing up on screen.
