The framework supports the idea that the World Championships in Oregon are becoming the toughest in the history of athletics. Next, the ball goes to US consumers, writes journalist Atte Husu from the Hayward Field stadium.
EUGENE. Welcome to the United States.
To a country that swears by its national anthem in the name of one value, freedom. It is easy to live this value immediately when, after the pandemic years, you step into the main venue of the World Cup in Oregon, the shiny new Hayward Field stadium.
The previous outdoor track and field championships were held a year ago in Tokyo under massive corona restrictions and without an audience. When it comes to sports mega-events, however, the corona theater seen in Tokyo was only the prelude when the Chinese organizers got up to speed with the Beijing Winter Olympics in February.
Even a less enlightened media consumer is certainly aware of the kind of surveillance that was practiced in China during the Olympics and what the politics have been like since the Games.
Since the Beijing Games are only half a year away, the feeling of freedom forcefully comes to the surface in the World Cup area of Oregon. The reason is simple.
Unlike in Tokyo and Beijing, practically no one who meets wears a mask – not an ordinary citizen, a volunteer, a media worker, an athlete, and none of their background people. Unlike in Tokyo and Beijing, the journalist can read the athlete’s state of mind in a completely different way, when in the interview the mask does not cover the vital part of communication, expressions, from the faces of either party.
The previous prestigious event in individual sports free of corona restrictions, which tickles the Finnish sports masses, was organized in Doha in 2019. Even then, it was the World Championships in athletics.
There’s enough contrast
In the World Cup, which starts on Friday under the name Oregon22, the focus is practically only on sports, in contrast to the trend of value competitions in recent years. Of course, the United States is in a state of internal political turmoil after the Supreme Court overturned the universal right to abortion, but as a clearly liberal state, Oregon is not denying a woman’s right to an abortion.
Oregon is actually one of the most liberal states in the US when it comes to abortion, but Idaho, the neighboring state to the east, takes the opposite line. During the Games, you may see expressions of opinion on the subject.
Slightly the best
The image of the United States is often marketed to the world as big and mighty. In athletics, it is exactly that. The World Championships have been held 18 times, and US athletes have won a whopping 381 medals. There are as many as 170 of these gold medals. Ylivoimasta says that Kenya, which is second in the medal statistics, has 60 gold medals.
When you take into account the dominance of the USA in the medal table, it is downright incomprehensible that the country is only now organizing the World Championships in Athletics for the first time.
And then when the biggest and greatest of its kind finally gets to be the organizer, it’s downright comical that the event is moved to a city with a smaller population than Turku – Eugene has 170,000 inhabitants – and to a small town smaller than the Helsinki Olympic Stadium. Hayward Field has only 13,000 seats, but for major events it is possible to increase the capacity to 25,000.
Even if the stadium was at maximum capacity, it would still be smaller than any previous World Cup venue – and that’s the best thing that’s happened to athletics in ages.
For far too long, prestigious athletics competitions have been organized in large stadiums, the occupancy rate of which, with the exception of the 2017 World Championships in London, has often remained modest. Sometimes even embarrassingly low.
In the US championships held at Hayward Field before the World Championships in Oregon, a paltry 3,664 tickets were sold on the best day and a total of 13,306 for the four days. The World Championships last ten days, and for example a ticket to the javelin final costs 80-100 euros for the ends and 100-375 euros for the sides.
Despite the great success of the USA, athletics is not one of the big sports in the country of the star flag. For example, in the US university system, the funding of the sport is largely based on the money flows from other popular sports such as American football.
The World Cup is a significant market gap for US track and field, and maximizing it requires filling the historically small stadium.
Heaven for athletes
At the World Championships in Oregon, it is certain that the competition arrangements are better than ever from the athletes’ point of view. Normally, the distance between the accommodation and the race venue is measured in several kilometers, and moving from one place to another requires transportation. However, Hayward Field is in the middle of the University of Oregon campus where the teams are housed.
It is quite unique at the World Athletics Championships that the press stand opens up a view of the university building less than a hundred meters away from the stadium, where the Finnish team is housed.
Won the 110-meter hurdles at the Tokyo Olympics Hansle Parchment was close to missing his star moment because he had inadvertently boarded the bus to the wrong venue. At the World Championships in Oregon, the equivalent is simply not possible.
For anyone who has been to Hayward Field, it is surely not unclear why the place is the cradle of USA track and field. Athletes have everything they need within a few hundred meters.
Those things, combined with the heat, have been a powerful equation: the brand new stadium has already set six current North American records, two of which are world records.
Everything is set on the fact that the record factory will continue in the next ten days.