World Athletics

Right.

And so I'm wondering, like, is this something – should that be allowed? Like, World Athletics currently doesn't have a rule against it.

But at the same time, we'll have, like, vague little points of, like, you can't wear or use something that will give you an obvious advantage with a caveat for super shoes because they lost the battle in super shoes.

Everyone wears them.

It's a weird one.

On the results, they've got area record next to it, but When you look also on World Athletics at like Australian female fastest road miles, Jayla Hancock Cameron ran 4.26 in Ballarat.

And that is first.

So I'm not sure what's going on.

Yeah, quite a sweet embrace, I thought.

Yeah.

That Sire, the guy who won, he doesn't really look like he runs on the track, like, looking at his World Athletics, at least this year.

He'd raced on the road for 10K twice after becoming African 5,000 metre champion in May.

I

mean, I read the list of females generally nowadays from Africa and And they, the IOC, World Athletics Conference is going through gyrations on rules, but there was a time, I forgot, 10 years ago where they had to pull down their pants and had someone look at them.

I mean, it was, when you said respect, that just triggered me a little bit because not that long ago, it wasn't a lot of respect.

It was downright weird.

for women's competition at the IOC events through mandatory SRY gene screening.

And that's going to be beginning in 2028.

And this follows some of the moves that World Athletics has also made.

And genetic testing was previously required by the IOC for participation in the Olympic Games from 1992 to 1996.

It's not one of the pick of the weeks, but we also had the picture of Jakob and Josh Kerr alongside each other while Mondo's performing.

And like the, uh, the interview, like the source of the comments on that, of Jakob's post on that from, uh, I mean, whoever's doing the world, the world athletics, uh, social media is doing a good job to be fair with the banter on that post.

Um, and then Josh Kerr's interview afterwards saying, um, how he's a

good 5k runner.

Yeah, there was some good little clips from World Ultimates.

It did turn out to be, yeah, we can talk about that now.

I think it was a big win for World Athletics.

It was a successful first event, like a really successful first event, actually.

And we get to do it really quickly.

Something else that we do that we've seen such great success is that, well, it's truly a track and field meet, right? Like we are accredited by World Athletics.

You're sanctioned.

Athletes get points for this event.

I remember I had to make a phone call to one of our studio executives for one of our rights holders and explaining, okay, look, this is what's happening.

London is still going on.

We're working with World Athletics to bring the dates into the calendar for next year.

And she was like, great.

But I really appreciated in this piece how you parsed through how track and field has...

Inconsistent is the word that you use, and I think it's the best way to describe how the track and field world, world athletics, USATF, have kind of embraced gambling, but also have not embraced gambling in ways that we've seen with the NFL, NBA, MLB.

And so...

I'm curious what led you to write about this topic for starters, especially in the track and field context?

And so, you know, in that way, as someone who's obviously very aware of the problems of the financialization of everything and gambling, you know, that can be seen as a positive.

The issue is that it is attempting or ostensibly trying to attempt to compete to be a major sports commodity spectacle, like you said.

And so, It is odd in some ways, although not if you kind of know the sport, that so far, these Diamond League events, World Athletics, there has not been these overt partnerships with these major sportsbooks like there was very early on with the embrace, like in the NBA or NFL.

And it's tricky because...

Huge news in athletics this week.

Nairobi has officially been awarded the 2029 World Athletics Championships, beating bids from London, Munich and Rome.

And it's going to be the first time in history that the championships have been held on African soil.

World Athletics President Seb Coe called Nairobi's bid compelling and emotional.

And it is genuinely a landmark moment, a sport that owes so much of its identity to Kenyan and East African distance runners finally taking its biggest event there.

But there is a sharper edge to this too.

But if you're going to make the most out of, you know, being there as a spectator, if you're not running yet, then yeah, getting out there to watch the elite races.

Do you think that's probably something that they should do? This needs to happen going forward then, World Athletics.

Maybe...

Find some of these races that are already established that have these sort of, you know, half marathon weekends that you can put the mile and the 5K on a day before.

You sort of use the same setup and facilities, like pool of resources.

And then you've got, you do have, you know... running fans there who want to be out there watching the best of the best and then they can go and race themselves a little bit later on

well and i think it's very attractive for a race organizer as well is that oh hang on yeah if i'm already doing very well as a race organizer but suddenly i can for a year i can add the tag that we host in the world championships you're going to sell out you're going to you're even more likely to boost your own event i think it's mutually very mutually beneficial and we're seeing that from european road running championships as well that's part of their business model is tie those elite races with the mass participation because then you'll be going hosting is just um financially really hard for many people to justify we'll get on to hosting won't we at some point um but yeah so it's really hard to put together those bids and whether it's for your local government or the the um federation or you know the world athletics or fifa whoever it is But suddenly a road running championships is just totally logical.

And then we'll just sell a load of mass participation.