Track and Field is unpopular because it takes SIX DAYS for a Track Meet????

All finals, field events one attempt.

all finals. less events from sprints to distance. 100, 1/4 mile, mile, and 3 mile. Long jump, pole vault, shot put and javalin.

Could you imagine how boring a month long cycling race would be?

Based on the Tour de France ratings, very boring to a lot of people.

uhhuh wrote:

Could you imagine how boring a month long cycling race would be?

Drake Relays attracts over 150,000 tourists to Des Moines each year. Penn Relays attracts 250,000 tourists to Philadelphia each year. The two weekend Mt Sac Relays series attracts over 1,000,000 tourists to Los Angeles each year. Track and Field is very popular.

Probably because they know there are lots of people from around the world who will pay $175 to see the whole thing from the west stands.

If it was only one day they'd get just 40 bucks each like the pre classic. And they couldn't say attendance was 100,000 or whatever.

TrackFan1987 wrote:

So I love Track and Field, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why it takes 6 freakin' days to run a track meet. It's not like these athletes are all doubling or tripling and need their rest days. It's idiotic.

It takes only 4 days to watch a golf tournament and only 2 hours to watch a World Cup soccer game (even if it's spread out over a few weeks).

If Track and Field wants fans to be spectators, the timeline needs to be compressed.

If I live on the East Coast, do I really need to stay up until 11:15 pm just to see if Mary Cain wins a medal? I'll do it, but don't expect the average sports fan to stay up past 11 for any sporting event that doesn't start with Super or end in Series.

Dumbtard of the year award. Wirld cup as you noted takes weeks. There are trials and finals in a world champ. If you want to compare one soccer game to an entire world championship you're a brain dead f'tard. A 100 meter race takes 10 secs to run, should I then compare that to every other sport and say they are too long? Do you not know how to use a like for like comparison? A normal non round track meet is a few hours long f'tard, just as a normal soccer game compared to a tournament is very different

Takes way too long. Wastes everyones time. I'd shorten WJR to two days like WIC.

Uh, no. The World Cup takes 3 boring YEARS! IAAF is doing you a favor cramming all this great T&F into 6 days.

TrackFan1987 wrote:

It takes only 4 days to watch a golf tournament and only 2 hours to watch a World Cup soccer game (even if it's spread out over a few weeks).

Six days in Paris, Berlin, Los Angeles, or Moscow is great. But six days in a piss-hole town nobody wants to live in and nobody ever heard of is Gitmo torture.

Track and field meets go pretty quick. People I've taken who haven't been to one before have said they enjoyed it more than they thought because there are events kicking off all over the field all the time.

Track is dead because we hardly have any stars, and the ones we do have seldom make an appearance.

Cricket takes days to play and is one of the world's most popular sports. Length of game is not inversely proportional to popularity.

The 1964 Olympics was 8 great days in Tokyo!

And they started with Bob Hayes and Billy Mills!

What track meet takes 6 days?

Track is unpopular* because it's unpopular. Different strokes for different folks. Cricket is interminably slow and takes breaks for tea, but is super popular in some places. Tennis used to be a big time sport in the US and is now a minor sport.

*Track is less popular than some sports and more popular than others. And it's much more popular in some places than others.

Instead of always wringing our hands about what we can change to make people like track, let's take the attitude of US soccer fans: if you don't like it, it's you that has the problem, not the game.

We are talking about a championship meet. A world championship meet. 6 days is the typical way a championship meet should be ran off. There are plenty of 1 to 2 day meets for the fans. The championship meets are for the athletes to be able to compete at the best of their ability against the world stage. I'm a true track fan and I love the 6 day layout.

I agree that they can be shortened and made more "intense".

Some days have all heats and semi's and one final.

I think they could shorten it and increase the # of viewers at the same time.

It would make doubling tougher but I think it could be made to work.

There are long musical festivals where all the bands spin out the same crappy music and people still pay gobs of money and sleep in the mud to party and hang.

Track just needs to loosen up and be more accesible to people.

When was the last time you saw a track meet on TV with a panel of experts, coaches and ex-competitors during track meets like there is with the TdF?

Why is there no T&F dedicated chat show with athlete interviews etc like there is for other (US) minority sports, such as Formula 1 and UK soccer? These would be cheap to make and surely they'd get higher ratings than the third showing of an obscure triathlon.

Universal Sports dedicated an hour to the Yorkshire Marathon for Chrissake, where one athlete finished in under 2:20.