Should we retire the 10000m from the track?

This was a glorified practice time trial event. It really was mostly drama free. The announcing was poor. You have to really be an aficionado to have any tolerance for this sort of event at all. So I don’t want them to discard the event but it is hopeless to get the general public interested.

Regardless of what this message board wants, expect that we will by no later than 2029 and possibly as soon as 2027 (and possibly the 5,000m and steeplechase, too)...

As a counterbalance, World Athletics will try to make the non-stadia championships (World XC and World Road Running Championships) bigger deals than they are now (and will also try to get those races--5k road, half marathon, 10k XC and XC mixed relay--into the Olympic program, although success is not guaranteed).

It will be a shame if so. It's a separate skill than the 5000 and serves as a place for the aerobic monsters to go if they are trying to double at a championship.

I love track and I love distance, but the 10,000 is boring. What would be way better would be to do a 12K cross country race in the summer Olympics and remove the steeples and the 10,000. And consider moving the 5,000 to a 3,000.

I'd be fine with the shift, but they need to admit their failures in road coverage and fix that first. road coverage ends up being a motorcycle camera on 3 people (or worst case 1), with paltry offerings for splits and placings of others shown on screen for 4-5 seconds.

Can't see around the corner behind them, no map markers, no data like rate of advance or falling off.

They need F1 style data/maps on the roads, camera coverage of mid and poor performing tiers, and some kind of data to tell the story of movement to NON-runners.

Just watched NYC Half, and they absolutely dropped the ball on showing anything (or even talking about) the very interesting men's AND women's 4th-10th race.

It is pretty much retired already. Diamond League doesn't host a single 10,000 all year. It only appears in major global championships, the national trials to get there, and a few stray meets like The Ten.

We are a long way from the entire country watching Gerry Lindgren beat the best Soviets in a dual meet over 10,0000 meters in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 1964.

Just need better announcing.

The british announcers make the tour de france interesting to watch, day after day of biking. Sure there's not any "excitement" for 20 minutes of a 10k, but you should know enough about enough of the runners to make it work.

Yes, once the 10K is given the boot, the same argument can be applied to the 5K relative to 3K, and so on until races longer than 800 are on road.

Which makes me wonder why stop at 800?🤨

Both 5000m & 10000m were added to Olympic schedule before television. Both events are awful on commercial television.

Events to add to Olympic schedule: 4x800m, 3000m, possibly 200m dash on straight away and possibly 200m low hurdles on straight away.

Olympic TV viewing of S&D is similar to T&F Olympic TV viewing. That doesn't make sense on first thought. Globally, T&F is much more popular than S&D. Swimming has numerous events less than 5 minutes which is great for television audience.

Did the entire country watch? And was it really a 62 mile race on the track?

Is it really a separate skill though? All the best 10,000m guys are simultaneously the best 5000m guys. No exceptions!

It makes perfect sense to scrap the 10,000m.

Not to nitpick but I am not sure there are no exceptions. Was Hicham the best 10000m guy? Was Lagat? I am not sure about that.

You've misunderstood me (or I wasn't clear).

I mean there are zero world class 10,000m runners that aren't also world class in the 5000m.

Cheptegei/Kiplimo/Barega/Kejelcha/ Aregawi/Ahmed/Fisher are medal contenders in both events. So just scrap the 10,000m altogether for the sake of better entertainment.

yeah hate to say it but it is gonna be phased out--then there would be no real chance to double as opposed to the sprinters with relay opportunities also; Crazy how Shorter did the 10000m/'thon double in '72 and Viren treble in '76 along with Zatopek, Mamo Wolde prior; also with heats in the 10000m! a multilap cross/criterium race over at least 8k would be a fair substitution to at least give the distance guys a chance to double and make it more spectator friendly...

I think you just solidified the argument for getting rid of it. This “glorified practice time trial” is one of the few times it is run outside of trials and championships. Additionally, the general public, as you stated, is not interested. Why not drop it so other events can be focused on/ invested in? The runners obviously don’t care to run it besides the instances named above anyway. Bring on the road and cross country

Yeah probably if you want to make track meets more exciting. maybe for outdoors slim it down to 100m, 110mh, 400, 1500, 3000steeple, 4x100 and 4x400. get rid of all the field events except pole vault.

At a time when there is almost unlimited entertainment and TV and streaming channels for every imaginable activity, it seems like track and field is ready to go the wrong direction and start altering its format and canceling events with a rich history (Nurmi, Mills, Siren, Bekele, Gebreselassie, etc) to appease a public that isn't going to watch anyway. How hard is it to include a 10000m in a competition, film it, and upload it to a streaming channel so that your dedicated fans can see it? Meanwhile if you want a product for the general public, you just curate out the "boring" events and package the meet into a 1 hour format for regular TV (which is never ever going to sell until World Athletics learns how to build a following and you don't do that by eliminating events). There are track fans all over the world, way more than enough to make this sport huge. Get rid of the long distance events and large parts of Africa will no longer be interested. I'm sure that's a great way to get more people watching, by eliminating an entire continent of viewers.

Instead lets throw it on the road, where it is far more difficult to film, where the event that supposedly nobody wants to watch is the only thing happening that day, so we'll put a 10k on TV by itself without the 100m or anything else to draw in other viewers and somehow it's going to be less boring because it's on the street?

Have you ever watched a football game without stats and commentators? Extremely boring, mostly people just standing around. The NFL works because the entire production is fantastic and they keep you from getting bored while everyone is standing around waiting for the snap and 5 seconds of activity.