Michael Johnson’s ideas for improving track & field

Track needs to adopt the PGA model.

- Card carrying pros (with similar qualifying process to achieve pro status)

- robust tour with $$$ prizes all the way down...if you compete you get paid

- Less emphasis on world records, times, etc.

- Variety of track events and distances that do not necessarily correlate with Olympic competition. Ex. 2k one week, 600 meter the next week. Would promote those classic crossover match ups between sprinters and mid-d.

- Mini-multi event comps for sprint, hurdle, and jump athletes. 3-5 event.

- Modified throwing events that would include accuracy and varied implements

- Rethink seating in track stadiums. One event at a time. Fans line the infield during races on track, fans (within reason) near throwing or jumping areas just like a tour tee off.

No points, just track $$$ winnings

Random Thoughts:

- Meets can’t just be in Eugene, LA, NY and Boston every year - bring events to cities with strong running communities.
- StL Festival of Miles is a great format. Nothing but miles and 800’s, kids, high school, pro. Action never stops - no set up needed between races, and every race starts and finishes in the same place. Find similar formats for the other events. Keep the action moving.
- I don’t know if you’ll ever get a pro track circuit going, but international team meets would probably draw more interest thank random shoe-company- sponsored athletes racing each other for a paycheck.
- Broadcasts: good announcers can sell an event. Track commentary has been crap for the past 30-40 years, especially for the big events. We went from Jim McKay giving stride to stride commentary of the NYC marathon to local reporters interrupting coverage of the actual race to interview someone hoping to finish in 5 hours. Yawn. Go back to the basics.
- The good athletes have to show up. No ducking races.
- In championships, more heats in the distances and FEWER people in the final! Put the 10,000 on the road or make it XC.

He makes some good points, but I don't think limiting each event to 15 minutes is necessary. People will sit and watch a 3 hour game of just about any other major sport.

The main thing you need, as he mentioned, is specialisation, and that means separating "track" and "field". I'd even go one further and separate sprints from distance events.

Broadcasters aren't utilising track's fanbase as it is, as most runners who follow the sport, won't sit and watch a track meet, because they just can't sit through the inevitable frustration of endless cuts to field events and the tiny amount of time spent on the thing they actually want to watch. Not to mention how difficult it is to access the broadcast (with 100s of different streaming services all charging a fee). It just isn't worth the effort.

If you guarantee 90 minutes of non-stop action, of the events that the viewer is actually interested in, then you have a winning formula. You simply need to reach the fanbase - make it easily accessible, let them know it's on - and fill it with stars.

The Sound Running Meets, along with the Night of the 10k PBs have been good models. Imagine having a men's and women's 1500m, 5,000m and 10,000m filled with the world's best runners, all broadcast back to back.

Field events are more akin to solo “time trials” than competition. With the exception of pole vault - they’re boring. Get rid of all of them. MJ is right there

they’re more similar to diving, without any of the beauty or allure of “holy cow that was amazing.” and almost nobody watches diving outside the Olympics.

Aside from track, I'm a baseball fanatic, chess nerd, competitive bowler, and Olympic style rifle shooter.

Every single one of those activities is constantly under the same existential crisis. How to improve? How to get more fans? How to get more money?

Just chill and enjoy. These things all have very large fan bases because they are interesting. Maybe not interesting to everyone, but interesting to large crowds around the world.

Relax and enjoy. Stop trying to change. You're not the NFL and that's great!

People tune it to watch a stage of a UCI tour for hours on end.

perhaps find a way to emphasize the team aspect. People love rooting for a team.

I've said this a thousand times, but the only events that have prelims should be the 100 and 200. Everything else should be a race against the clock, with multiple heats. Turning track meets into 10 day events is a literal joke, and not interesting to watch at all.

Agree on the general idea of changes being needed to make the sport more watchable. Like I would never expect someone who hasn't been a competitive runner at some level or like family or close friends or something of a competitive runner to go to a track meet or watch it on tv outside of the Olympics or WC. It's not presented in an exciting way. Johnson is dead on with that.

Agree on most of his points, though not the field events. The throws just need a lot more storytelling. I mean it is already awful how little money/support the top throwers in the world get, but it makes sense because even most track fans are the least interested in the throws. And like it'd be crazy to take the jumps out. People at track meets always get really into the jump competitions. But they need to go faster to be more digestible, specifically for TV. Johnson is right when he says they need to be reimagined in a fast action format. Have two jumping runway side by side so that they measuring/raking or whatever needs to be done after one person jumps gets done with the other person is jumping right next to that in the other jumping runway. So you basically have people jumping constantly.

Teams!!!!

Head to head matchups need to be prioritized with the promotions being around the stories of those head to head matchups. If there was a teams format that be crucial. If people could root for a team, and at meets the athletes wear their team colors instead of just seeing everyone in the same Nike singlet or whatever and the teams obviously are competing for points to win the meet just like HS/College level, that would make it a lot easier to get into watching the sport. All the most popular sports are team sports because its easy to root for a team and against the opposing team. It's much harder to root for a few specific people out of like 15 events and hundreds of athletes. And these teams should be location based, not just transfer the shoe company sponsors into teams for the sport. Nobody gives a crap about rooting for Nike vs Adidas. They would care about rooting for Oregon vs Arizona or something like that. Also it'd make it easier to get to know the athletes if you can look up who is on a team, and this in turn makes it easier to tell stories, both on the team level and the individual level.

Also with teams then you get the athletes who aren't in a race out there cheering on their teammates. Normally you just have them cheering on their training group mates which is generally only gonna be a few people. But like if you have say the long jump going on when races aren't going on, and you have it done quickly with constant jumps using two runways, and then you have the other athletes on the team (at least those not warming up) all crowded around the jumps cheering on their teammate jumpers, that makes it all a lot more interesting for the viewer who can then see hey they really are on the same team even though they do different events.

But yeah as Johnson says you need some sort of investment of money into the space to get the ball rolling and move it away just from shoe companies sponsoring athletes and athletes training in small training groups and then going to compete individually. You need money to set up these teams and meet in a team format with the changes made and with promotion to get people showing up and watching on TV.

There's literally dozens of places to start when it comes to improving the sport...unfortunately there has been very little change.

Sponsors need to step up and invest in more than just a handful of athletes when they are brining in billions of dollars in revenue directly related to their running specific apparel and footwear. Bonus structures need serious improvements in contracts as well. All those saying there's plenty of fans and already a huge audience for our sport...take a look back at the 2020 trials (covid still somewhat relevant, yes I get it) but being there in person, there could not have been more than 5,000 people in those stands...the largest stage for US athletes outside of worlds/the olympics in the "mecca" of US track & field - lack of fans showing up is also part of the issue. USATF and the city / state of Eugene / OR waiting until 2 weeks before the trials to make fans aware they are even going to allow spectators? Yes it does come back to the governing body for those who disagree in some instances.

Leads to our next problem...Hayward is great yes, the city...ehh? Difficulty in getting there? Not easy access for fans. So for those who want to watch, only option is TV and to MJ's point, broadcasts are usually very slow and not exciting, even for the real die hard track fans. "Only the best athletes" ?? Okay, but what qualifies as the best? Selecting the top 10 in each event? Top 10 one day can look much different in a month or two...Certainly can't go off of time in distance events with tactical racing etc? Where does that leave other athletes?

But money, money is the biggest issue. Makes it hard to invest resources into this sport when a lot of our best athletes struggle to support themselves.

Carefully manage non-race activity during big meets. It diminishes a race to see uninterested people cluttering the infield or athletes casually warming up on the outer lanes. Let's not have high jumpers waiting in lane 6 during a 10K world record attempt. This might sound like small stuff, but it contributes to a low-rent feel.

Also, let's ditch the triple jump; its participates can move to its purer brother.

Personally don't have much of a problem with the sport as it stands now, but I've felt that taking some cues from auto racing might be useful to bring in casual fans.

Start with tv presentation. Auto racing broadcasts have tons of interesting info on the side of the screen - gaps between drivers, current tire, last pit stop, etc. You could show each runner's gap to the leader, last lap pace, time ahead/behind record pace, make/model of shoe, maybe even things like heart rate and cadence/stride length.

Then, something like an F1 season with points and individual and team championships could be interesting if done right. Have an event champion and an overall points champion. With enough prize money, who knows, maybe you might even see the big stars show up and race consistently.

There are a lot of problems that cause track and field to be poorly received. Not enough time to mention them all in one post.

I'll focus on the main problem: everyone is afraid to lose. Why is the Olympics the only meet that matters to the general public? Because it's the only meet where you can (mostly) guarantee everyone shows up and you're really going to have the best racing against the best. Even that isn't the case because people fail to make their nation's Olympic team (e.g. Daniel Komen).

How about a circuit like F1. A fixed circuit where everyone shows up and races every event, and the events are spread around the world. Some kind of points system so the yearly championship winner must accumulate the most points, but with points set up so that you cannot realistically win the title if you don't run in every race.

Then the next problem is races like the 2016 Olympic 1500m (which was actually a pretty good race but everyone knows what I'm talking about here). So instead of winner take all on the points, maybe some kind of points system for the race itself, like you get 1 point for leading the first lap, 2 for leading the second lap, 3 for the 3rd, 4 for winning (in this case Centro would have gotten all 10 points oddly enough). So if you lead three laps and get outkicked, you get more points. This would suck if it happened to the same guy every week because the champion would be a guy who got outkicked in every race but I'm just presenting the general idea of incentivizing pushing the pace early. Some side effects of this would be if you felt wiped out in the next race (because you're racing 12 times a year now or whatever), instead of ducking the race like they would today, the guy would just blast a couple of early laps and get his 3 points, then die and lose, but still be accumulating points, and this keeps the pace in every race honest because a number of people would choose to fight for the rabbiting points sometimes instead of the win. You could also heavily incentivize records by giving extra points (5 points for a meet record, 10 points for a world record or something like that). So the points winner would probably be the guy who could usually win or set a record, but there is some slight disadvantage to be never leading and only winning in a kick. And you get some bonus for participating in the race up front instead of hanging back Mo Farah style and only taking over at the end.

It sounds complicated, and would need a lot of tweaking to get it set up in the beginning, but the basic idea would be: 1) incentivize having the best guys racing each other at every meet, about 10-12 times a year, no exceptions. 2) incentivize racing, but not slow sit and kick affairs. 3) incentivize world records, but only in the context of points accumulated for the season (no huge cash bonus incentivizing a guy to sit out the whole season and just go for it in one race). 4) no sponsorship at all if you don't show up at every meet (imagine if Patrick Mahomes only played the 3rd, 7th, and 12th game of the season and you didn't know which games he'd be in until after the kickoff). Or maybe huge fines for not being in a meet so if you do get a big WR bonus at one meet, you lose it all back if you don't compete the whole season.

Sorry for the disjointed grammar, throwing this together in a stream of thought manner and in a hurry...

Some points well made by Johnson and many posting here, and an important topic.

Track and field realistically depends more than other sports on the pull and value of world records. The contest matters more in the Tour de France, F1, golf or tennis majors - a great event does not need course record speeds (or their prospect), or a winner finishing always 20-under, or shooting 58s, or showing extreme Watts/kg estimates on l’Alpe d’Huez.

Field events have continued relevance because field eventers breaking records (Mondo Duplantis atm) are a commercial draw, and as much a lead on a nightly highlights package as the average Diamond League 100 or 200 metres.

For women's events, the challenges of breaking Flojo's, Koch's, Kratochvila's, et al's records stymie the profile of not only today's women, but those of the last few decades, undermining even perennial achievers and not rebalanced fully by improved shoes and tracks.

Similar if less severe issues may be involved on the men's side, though rare talents like Noah Lyles probably have more chance to make a mark (all the same, 9.58 may be a long shadow). Michael Johnson's own career and enduring legacy obviously has merit and momentum from his 19.32 breakthrough and a prolonged and successful pursuit of Butch Reynold's 400 mark. His famous race against Donovan Bailey was the clash of two world record holders, and could not be replicated right now.

In other sports, comparisons to past greats perhaps are more a curiosity or matter of trivia or fun debate, but this is less so in track and field where records are central, and when these records stand for extended periods.

Realistically there is a heavy wake that follows records and extreme marks by athletes, and indeed coaches and training groups, that are not genuinely repeatable, with risks of lost public and commercial interest at scale, and at times interference with coaches and athletes own efforts and understanding of training, and the systems they learn from.

It is not fair to say that all long-standing records are via doping issues, but the
profile of the sport does rely some way on barriers being broken, and doping legacy could form a harsh thing on that front.

Progress of training methods as well as public interest ideally would track the progress of records, but we are not there yet and maybe it would take a shift of honesty across the board (much of it retrospective re East German marks for e.g.) to get nearer.

First ever post.
great site

lots of dribble on the message boards.
I agree with MJ

The tainting of the sports by continuing drug problems compounded by levels of performance from the 80’s could well be insurmountable.

Athletics was enhanced by the old East v West conflicts that saw Olympic sports as part of the conflict.

Johnson’s opening comment about T and F never being a sensible invention if we are looking at starting today can’t be ignored.

It may well be that the sort of developments that he suggests are the only way for the future but come what may the future looks fraught.If there where shares in it it would be “ sell”.

I've been obsessed with this issue myself. Track & Field is primarily an individual sport but it can be altered to bring more of a team focus. And I think that would really help with building interest because by the time one viewer has learned enough of the big names in all the events to care about the outcomes and match-ups, you've lost another 9 potential viewers along the way. With a team focus you can sorta skip that stage and get immediate buy-in.

It also needs more condensing to make it palatable for TV. The changes made to the diamond league were a step in the right direction but even I rarely watch the whole thing (an I consider myself a super fan). There's just too many things going on, and outside of a few key rivalries the results really don't matter until the big meets of the year.

I came up with an idea that takes 6 disciplines and runs them one by one like a decathlon, except it's 2 teams and you use different athletes for different disciplines. So you would have your distance runners vs the other distance runners in the endurance event and your throwers vs the other throwers in the shot put etc. I call it the team Hexathlon. You can read more about it @

teamhexathlon.wordpress.com

Homepage

afamobia7602

test your limits

Link:teamhexathlon.wordpress.com/

Each discipline would only last ~ 20 mins and all of them count towards the overall team score at the end (which should improve the viewer engagement). You're less likely to skip the long jump discipline if you know that your team's performance there will affect the result.

One thing though, is that a lot of the discplines diverge quite a bit from their track and field counterparts. I tried to prioritize what I thought was interesting to see visually and drama-wise. So it's not literally 6 track and field disciplines mashed together.

One example is the endurance event (where I tried to reduce sit and kick tactics, but keep the excitement of a kick). It's called the 20 minute chase, and 5 runners on each team accumulate points by running as far as they can for 20 minutes. Each team also has a 'chaser'. The chasers start further back and try to overtake as many enemy runners as they can before the 20mins is over. Each runner they overtake earns them points. The team with the most points wins the discipline (with some bonus points for whoever is in first place).

As you can see it's not really a track and field event, but long distance runners would have the best tools to excel at it. The other disciplines are similar.

Seb Coe and Usain Bolt both were involved a few years back in development of a type of team format with a range of different distances/events and relays (also with Asafa Powell and Kerron Clement) - , .

worldathletics.org

Bolt launches Nitro Athletics in Melbourne | NEWS | World Athletics

Nine-time Olympic gold medallist Usain Bolt will compete and captain the ‘Bolt All-Stars’ in a new sports entertainment series set to revolutionise global track and field.

Link:worldathletics.org/news/news/nitro-ath...

smh.com.au

Nitro Athletics: What's it all about?

Michael Gleeson

Nitro. Everything you need to know.

Link:www.smh.com.au/sport/athletics/nitro-a...

Agreed that, post a Bolt-led bull market, there's less general media focus on track and field, and no question the sport was designed for an amateur context, and many events are niche. Agreed too that there is no longer the Cold War proxy, or a new rivalry with China, India and other emerging powers. National rivalry is one way to scale up the number of athletes and events that matter to fans, and the quantum of commercially 'great athletes' will be crucial to scaling up investment (vs. boom and bust via Bolt, MJ, Lewis etc.)

Part of Johnson's outlook seems to be less eminence of the olympics and world champs above the Diamond League ('amassing a large and growing fanbase to prove the sport has changed, has stepped out of the shadow of the Olympics, and is worthy of their investment'). This I think needs testing per his suggested marketing research.

The lack of direct relation of the DL to major champs qualifying does put track a long way from golf, tennis, F1, where the circuit and the majors are the main thing, and have distinct character in terms of course or playing surface. I'm not sure track events in different cities give a similar variation (out of stadium marathon a different story and more like cycling).

Participation in Diamond League and others races eventually may improve with the pattern of the new world ranking system, but it might require big incentives (things like auto-qual. to world semi-finals for top DL ranked athletes).

To the general premise of private investment and commercialisation/profit motive, there is significant private investment in individual athletes, whether or not that is evenly distributed or even subjectively fair (ability obviously can give way to better looking well spoken (usually English-speaking) from a larger market). The same is arguably true for tennis etc, where the top few attract diverse contracts and many are at the margins.

It is not fully clear why a large private investor would scale up their spend to include those who are not frequent medallists in global championships. Very large, for-profit companies have been DL investors, like Dalian Wanda and Samsung, and big shoe companies like Nike or Adidas also have plenty of cash and strong ties to the sport, and proven marketing ability. Why they are not scaling up their investment may be the first question.

For Americans (a sizable portion of the fan base), it would help to include non-metric equivalents to field event distances/heights.

I'm guessing you're either too young or just weren't into sports when track WAS popular.

Just one example- youtube the 1971 Dream Mile in Philadelphia. Look at the crowds and it was on TV- I watched, my parents and brother watched with me and it was about 6 months later that I started running at the age of 12.

One other thing- look at the field- it wasn't overcrowded with too many athletes wearing the same Nike uniform.

I also remember (and again you may just be too young) when NASCAR first became popular. It was early 1990's and the WSJ had an article about the marketing of the sport and how if NASCAR could be marketed to be popular any sport can.

To add to the solutions- our athletes don't race enough. They're not in the public eye to become well known and recognizeable.