Eugene. Half empty stands despite the fact that the World Cup in Athletics was not decided on a smaller stadium.
People are a few blocks from the track and don’t even know there’s a tournament going on.
TrackTown, USA?
Yes, pyttsan.
I’ve been here in Eugene for nearly two weeks.
World Cup atmosphere?
loom.
Only when you step into the stately Hayward Field building will you realize that the World Cup is taking place.
Or in the immediate vicinity where all participating countries are crammed into crowded student corridors, with no air conditioning and communal toilets and showers.
I’ve never experienced anything like this and then participated in 17 of the 18 World Championships in Athletics.
This is not worth the sport.
World stars who live as poor students and have to stand in line for a moment in the morning, when we ordinary people – including most of us in the Swedish press – are drowning on a private toilet seat.
Particularly infuriating is that the other candidate for this World Cup was Gutenberg.
He was kidnapped by the then corrupt Senegalese Chairman Lamine Diack and later imprisoned. Now he is deceased and has never seen his homeland again after years in house arrest in France.
Bang, Eugene would have won the World Cup without Gutenberg even having a chance to present their concept.
With the Nike shoe company billions behind and with current chairman Sebastian Coe as a paid ambassador, what is now called global athletics circumvents all previous rules.
I understand that the then president of the Swedish Athletics Federation, Bjorn Eriksson, has come to the fore.
Mold was at the highest level.
It’s embarrassing
And when I am now following the end result here in Eugene, I feel very upset when I was also at the World Championships in Athletics in Gothenburg in 1995.
That was all in Eugene 2022.
A party, an entire city involved and where a move couldn’t have been made without being reminded of that thing. And where all the active people live in the hotels that surround the avenue.
The glorious weather had already been mentioned, but there were booths crowded every day with an audience cheering for everything and everyone.
Then there are three times as many spectators in Olivier as there are here in Eugene with 12,500 seats.
No, this World Cup is embarrassing.
Time has passed to repair the damage.
When the Wednesday evening session began, the arena wasn’t even full until a quarter.
Sarah Lahti and the other girls ran the 5,000m heat test in front of empty booths.
Then it was said that these tournaments will be the path of athletics to the future here United States of America, a country completely uninterested in the sport that has won the most Olympic medals of all time. They take care of every four years.
But there is no greater interest in athletics, not even in the city that calls itself the capital of athletics. I find it hard to see it grow in the States.
Despite all the medals that crumble.
hard to reach
When I walk around in and around Hayward Field, it feels like a Swedish championship at home in Sweden. Although in a slightly larger format.
They are the most active, leaders and closest mourners.
I have not seen the smoke of an ordinary sports audience.
And as usual in American sports, it seems that half of those who pay the most are interested in drinking and eating and prefer standing in line at the stalls during competitions.
It has already drawn criticism in many places.
Swedish director Daniel Weisfeldt believes the regulators have failed.
– Yes, they had this opportunity to arrange the World Cup, but they did not take advantage of it. It was hard to get tickets and reach a regular audience. He says it’s a lot like a regular college tournament.
– Compare, for example, to the World Cup in Gothenburg in 1995. There was an athletics party in the whole city, Olivier was sold out, and wherever you turned, you knew that the World Cup was taking place.
The United States leads by a wide margin
The World Cup has never been held in a smaller city (170,000) or in a smaller arena.
Then the World Cup was a huge success in sports for the mother nation.
The United States quickly took the full lead in the medal tournament with six gold, five silver, eight bronze, and a total of nineteen medals.
Ethiopia second up to eight.
I myself have participated in seventeen out of eighteen potential World Cups in Athletics and have never seen a slight interest.
It wasn’t until recently in Doha 2019 that guest workers were bussed to fill the stands on some evenings.
But activists still live in four- and five-star hotels.
Here in Eugene, I stood and listened to Norway’s Caroline Grofdal after she moved in a 33-degree heat during the women’s 5,000m.
When asked about the heat, she replied:
– Yes, but it is much warmer in the room.
In the student corridor where you live, the alternative is to turn on a fan that is buzzing wildly, or stand in the heat and hope the temperature drops at night and makes it possible to sleep.
I never think active players had a worse World Cup experience.
The only home of the United States lives in a hotel with all the amenities it offers.
I’m not saying anything about it, as all native nations have the advantage of choosing housing first.
But in this case, there are no longer rooms in a city that has not swallowed so many visitors.
Everyone else has to live with what to avoid in times of Corona that has flared up again in recent weeks.
But having such a big difference is scary.
equal terms?
barely.
Otherwise, only the biggest stars are allowed to stay in hotels, which their shoe sponsors have designated for them.
I’m glad Mondo Duplants belongs in this category.