Opinion | July 16, 2025
One of the major challenges of track and field is sustaining interest in periods outside of the major championships. Every four years, there’s a gap year without an Olympic Games or World Championships. Unlike most major team sports, such as football (soccer, American, Australian, or any other type), athletics doesn’t benefit from consistent exposure throughout the season.
I’ll start by giving World Athletics credit for recognizing this exposure challenge and attempting to correct it by creating the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship that will kick off in 2026, almost exactly a year from the 2025 World Championship this September.
Where I’ll be critical is in the execution of the idea.
Paying athletes? Good. Trying to make the event more television-friendly? Good. Filling the gap in the world calendar? Good.
Omitting a sizeable number of events? Bad. Running a 2028 version right after the Olympics? Don’t like that. Recreating the Diamond League Final with fewer events? Why?
According to the event’s official page, “The first-ever World Athletics Ultimate Championship brings together Olympic champions, world champions, Diamond League winners and top-ranked athletes – battling to be crowned the Ultimate Champion.”
Maybe I’m out of touch with reality here, but after reading the initial press clipping, my initial reaction as a fan was, “I don’t care about this.” And I think this sentiment is shared by many.
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Notable Omissions, Especially in the Field and Distance Events
The World Athletics Ultimate Championship will attempt to condense an entire championship meeting down to roughly three evening sessions of roughly three hours each. To achieve this, they will not offer a full rotation of events and will omit all preliminary rounds.
Here’s a look at the events that will be contested at the 2026 event.
Men’s Events
- 100-meter
- 200-meter
- 400-meter
- 800-meter
- 1,500-meter
- 5,000-meter
- 110-meter hurdles
- 400-meter hurdles
- pole vault
- high jump
- long jump
- hammer throw
- javelin throw
Women’s Events
- 100-meter
- 200-meter
- 400-meter
- 800-meter
- 1,500-meter
- 5,000-meter
- 100-meter hurdles
- 400-meter hurdles
- pole vault
- high jump
- long jump
- triple jump
- javelin throw
Mixed Events
- 4 x 100-meter relay
- 4 x 400-meter relay
So what’s missing? Events that will be contested at the 2025 World Championships but not the World Athletics Ultimate Championship include:
- men’s/women’s 10,000-meter
- men’s/women’s marathon
- men’s/women’s 3,000-meter steeplechase
- heptathlon/decathlon
- men’s triple jump
- men’s/women’s shot put
- men’s/women’s discus
- women’s hammer throw
- race walk
- non-mixed relays
Once again, the field events are given the short end of the stick, and the throwers aren’t given a stick at all.
According to the competition’s official FAQs, which attempt to justify this decision:
“The World Championships spans nine days with 13 or 14 sessions. In contrast, the Ultimate Championship will be a three-day event with just three evening sessions – each of around three hours. This means not every event can be included – but each session offers a carefully curated mix of track events, jumps and throws, ensuring the entire stadium is buzzing and fans are on the edge of their seats.”
Is anybody else getting it’s not you, it’s me break-up vibes? Just be honest with us. This is a profit-driven decision, and these events were omitted because they weren’t seen as profitable. And this is my main criticism. Let’s be real. In 2026, very few fans will be watching a live feed. Most will be streaming after the events have already concluded. It wouldn’t take much to, at the very least, include the missing events, even if they’re put outside the main event program to keep a condensed schedule for television and live viewers.
Unclear Goal
Is the World Athletics Ultimate Championships trying to be the Diamond League Final or a World Championship? The event’s vision doesn’t seem to be clear. In 2026, it seems like it’s a placeholder for the World Championships, but its goal becomes even murkier for 2028.
The Olympic Games will be held July 14–30, 2028. The dates of the Diamond League Final haven’t yet been announced, but presumably it will be in August or September, and then the World Ultimate Championships will presumably be held after.
For European athletes, the European Athletics Championships will also be squeezed into the schedule in early June, creating a problematic championships season that may run from early June to mid-September.
Again, according to the event’s official FAQs, the 2028 event will “[end] the year on high.”
I’ll let you decide if one more championship is needed in an already packed schedule. In my opinion, it’s overkill and the Olympics or Diamond League Final is already enough to end the year on a high.
The closest comparison I can think of is the ATP/WTA tennis finals. If you’re not familiar, these are year-end tennis tournaments featuring the top eight men and women. But the role of this event is clearer in the yearly calendar. The way tennis is structured, there are four major competitions throughout the year, and this final plays the role of crowning an overall yearly champion.
How Much Do Fans and Athletes Care?
According to the meet website, “The first-ever World Athletics Ultimate Championship brings together Olympic champions, world champions, Diamond League winners and top-ranked athletes – battling to be crowned the Ultimate Champion.”
As a fan, I honestly don’t care at all who is the “Ultimate Champion.” I care about the Olympic Champion and the World Champion, but this title doesn’t mean anything to me. Will the top athletes not already be competing at these events in peak form?
Will casual fans who only tune into the major championships care about who’s the Ultimate Champion? Call me skeptical. In fact, they may be confused by one more title that seems to overlap with “World Champion.”
How about for athletes? How much will they care?I’m also skeptical that the title will carry much weight for them. What athletes will care about is the cash prize attached. The event will award $10 million in prize money, with a first-place finish awarding $150,000 and a 16th-place finish awarding $2,000.
I’m all for getting athletes paid, and maybe it’s a fair argument that this meet is necessary to get the sponsorships required to fund this prize money. But I think it’s also fair to argue there may have been a better way to go about it. Ten million dollars sounds like a lot, but when you spread it over many events, it starts sounding less impressive.
The prize money drops quickly from $150,000 for first to $75,000 for second, down to $40,000 for third, and $10,000 for eighth. This is still a sizeable chunk of cash for top athletes who are not in the elite of the elite tier on multi-million dollar sponsorships. But unfortunately, it’s this top tier that probably drives the event’s marketability.
Is a maximum of $150,000 per event enough to motivate the sport’s stars to arrive in peak form? Mondo Duplantis seems to be able to break the world record in the pole vault whenever he wants, and reportedly receives up to $100,000 from Puma every time he does so on top of his sponsorship contract, other competition winnings, and other brand deals.
The controversial Noah Lyles is arguably the most famous active track athlete in the world. As estimated by Citius Magazine, he’s probably making more than $2 million per year on his Adidas contract. Grand Slam Track couldn’t give him a number that motivated him enough to show up, will this championship?
How Excited Am I about the World Athletics Ultimate Championship?
Not very. Will I tune in? Maybe incidentally, but as an avid track fan, I wouldn’t go out of my way to tune in or bother to pay a subscription fee.
To capture my interest, I would have to see a full rotation of events, including those not seen as “profitable.” I would also need to see a clearer vision of what this event is trying to be.
Is it a World Championship? Is it a Diamond League Final? Is it an ATP/WTA final equivalent? Because right now, it seems like a showcase to simply garner sponsors without much purpose. In my opinion, there are better ways to fill the gap in the schedule.
I would be a proponent of bringing in a team challenge similar to the European Team Challenge, or even a continental challenge, where you could have three teams: Europe, the United States, and the rest of the world, or some other division where the medal count would roughly be equal.