My wife and I traveled 1500 miles for Worlds in Eugene. Brilliant event. Our motel was a four-minute walk from Hayward Field and we paid $150/night. Front row seats surrounded by coaches, high-5's with gold medalists, friends around the country noticed us on NBC. 'Got in 6 miles cheering for Sara Hall during the women's marathon, and ran the heck out of Pre's Trail. Not everyone was so lucky, but Oregon 22 was far from a bust for spectators.
Rojo makes great points but your take was mine exactly.
My take was similar. We (wife and kids) made a vacation out of it. Had a cozy airBnB cottage an hour away, which was a bit annoying but it was really, really nice where we stayed. Quiet, cool, peaceful, nice river. I didn't pay for the higher priced seats many sessions, but we had a great time. My 12 year old has selfies with Mondo (among others), and we ended up taking home two discarded Team Canada relay bibs, given to us by a WA official who'd been working the call room and saw us leaving the stadium after the 4x100m gold with our Canadian flag.
Long ago the residents rebelled and had police install NO-PARKING WO Permit signs. An app for the Permit priced it at $520.00 for Worlds. No one bought it. The streets were empty. That was the objective!
Hasn’t this been discussed ad nauseam with numerous threads on the message boards before, during, and after Eugene?
Yes, and people continue to defend the event like it was a success for track and field.
Birmingham sold out the commonwealth games athletics - every session. Morning and evening.
The crown jewel of our sport outside of the Olympics, was given to a town with a population of 175,000 people. The end result was going to be obvious from the outset. The nearest airport was what 2 hours away?
AH well, at least the next world event is the world XC champs that are being held in Australia. A major city right? No, Bathurst. Population 37,000. Well done World Athletics.
To all the obvious, add the fact that they destroyed historic Hayward Field, along with all of its shade, which is key in hot and sometimes rainy Eugene in summer, and thereby destroyed the historic character of the destination.
I've been to Eugene, and it's just not that nice a place. I had imagined it would be gorgeous, with great running trails and easy access to mountains, but it was kind of dingy, small in a bad sense, a boring commercial-entertainment district, not too many good places to run at all in town, a short trail.
We track rats hate to admit it but this is 100%. Most people have no clue about track or the stars of today. They may know Bolt or Felix but that’s about it. My friends and colleagues have a glaze over their eyes when I talk about the Worlds or US trials. Honestly they just don’t care. To them it’s boring to see heat after heat, race after race with nobody special to focus on. Let alone travel across the country for it. Shouldn’t be “baffling” to anyone. That’s why I crack up with all these runners who think they’re IT and get themselves into Wikipedia like they’re some of kind of historic, famous person. LOL
T&F doesn;t need an invasion of millions of new NFL/NBA-trained fans who will damage the sport by demanding new forms of titillation and then rapidly flee to the next viral spectacle recommended to them by their corrupt influencers. This "boring" sport is the purest and classiest of human sporting events. Trying to compete with NFL and Wrestlemania for mindless, boozed-up, low-IQ fans would be degrading.
you're preaching to the choir. We here all know that. But you are not correct in that we don't need more fans. Sorry I don't see how they would "damage" the sport. Having warm bodies fill the seats and watch the TV events and have more medial exposure on it is important for this sport. The problem is it doesn't exist beyond the true track fans. That's the whole point.
My wife and I traveled 1500 miles for Worlds in Eugene. Brilliant event. Our motel was a four-minute walk from Hayward Field and we paid $150/night. Front row seats surrounded by coaches, high-5's with gold medalists, friends around the country noticed us on NBC. 'Got in 6 miles cheering for Sara Hall during the women's marathon, and ran the heck out of Pre's Trail. Not everyone was so lucky, but Oregon 22 was far from a bust for spectators.
Did you book way in advance or last second? Shit motels were charging $400+
Can we finally admit that the only people who call it “tracktown” are the marketers.
This has been said before but Eugene is an isolated small to medium city, in an isolated state that has limited capacity to host these events.
You have minimal options to fly in. The largest airport is 2-3 hrs away. To be decent housing you have to drive an hour plus north. They built a stadium too big in the valley.
Now what about oregionians? The football stadium fills for a game? Why not the track? Competing priorities, no one will drive in an hour+ per day to go to an event and do it for 4-7 days in a row.
Worlds should really be held by country qualifiers, regionally and then with a single two-three day meet to get everything in
I understand what you're saying about this.
But it is amazing the Olympic Trials used to get about 20,000 a night in Eugene. But that shows the drama of the Olympic Trials is its own pull and a lot of people are presumably related to athletes.
Except number 5. Something about sport as a spectator for me: is that you support who you want to see win whether or not you or others believe that can win. Surely nobody is more likely to go if they think they are assured a win?
My wife and I traveled 1500 miles for Worlds in Eugene. Brilliant event. Our motel was a four-minute walk from Hayward Field and we paid $150/night. Front row seats surrounded by coaches, high-5's with gold medalists, friends around the country noticed us on NBC. 'Got in 6 miles cheering for Sara Hall during the women's marathon, and ran the heck out of Pre's Trail. Not everyone was so lucky, but Oregon 22 was far from a bust for spectators.
Did you book way in advance or last second? [Shoddy] motels were charging $400+
Way in advance--364 days. I admitted we were lucky.
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"Comfort must not be expected by folks that go a pleasuring."
I can only speak to the "Local" part, by which I assume the author meant the Pacific Northwest. Why out-of-towners didn't go was well explained by Rojo. What he wrote was correct.
But Rojo's 5th point was spot on for why locals didn't go. Those of us who love track had the Oregon HS State meet at Hayward, then NCAAs, then PRE, then USAs, then Worlds. That was broken up by the Portland Track Classic which also had world-class racing for a few bucks right in most people's backyard (right in Portland).
Essentially I had 6 elite level meets to go to all within a few months. I can't (and don't want to) spend every weekend of my year doing the same thing.
Agreed, in the past 18 months (because I've got runners in the family) I went to Eugene for summer track all comer meets, fall cross country preview and State meet, HS State track meet, World's, Pre, HS Nationals (I'm sure I'm still missing a couple).
Aside from too many big meets (I missed NCAAs, USAs) my biggest complaint is that I got burnt out running Pre's trail so I switched to run Amazon.
I absolutely love the new stadium and while I do wish that World's was better attended and the beer was cheaper it was a runner's paradise. Now, I can't speak for non runners and am unsure in how to attract them, it's nice to know that runners can have nice things regardless of how hard it is to get there and stay.