Trace the footsteps of athletics history and before Carl Lewis, there had to be a Jesse Owens paving the way.
Gunder Hagg and Arne Andersson had to stand in front of a Haile Gebrselassie, a Paavo Nurmi, Steve Cram and Steve Ovett. And long before Daley Thompson, there had to be a Jim Thorpe.
Not in terms of promoting athletic achievement, but in the modern advancement of the sport itself. For if one follows the same path in athletics, it took most of the last century for the sport’s governing bodies to finally abandon their amateur ideals and begin to embrace the pro age as we know it today.
The real and irreversible turning point was the first World Athletics Championships in Helsinki in 1983, 40 years ago, which for the first time put an athletics event outside the Olympic Games in the world spotlight. Only now, with the events of the 2023 World Cup unfolding in Budapest over the next nine days, does it seem like things might change again, or maybe just take a different direction.
This governing body was first established as the International Amateur Athletic Federation (IAAF) during the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm, and for years afterwards the then Rule 13.2 in the IAAF Handbook was held sacred by some: “The Olympic Games are regarded as the…” World Championship”.
That was only part of the deal: any payment of athletes, including other parts, was strictly forbidden, which is why Jim Thorpe, the Indian who won the pentathlon and decathlon in Stockholm, both world records, was soon banned. As reports surfaced, he received starvation wages for playing baseball a few years earlier.
Owens suffered a similar fate: he was banned out of sheer “intent to go pro” after his four gold-medal exploits in Berlin in 1936 and eventually had to compete against horses in Cuba. Nurmi, who won five gold medals at the 1924 Paris Olympics, was later suspended on similarly tenuous grounds, as were Swedish duo Hagg and Andersson, the original chasers of the sub-four-minute mile.
During these decades, the IAAF remained opposed to a World Athletics Championship. They explored the prospect in the 1960s but never pursued it, largely due to their loyalty to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).
Then, at the 1974 IAAF Congress in Rome, a sub-committee for the World Championship was formed, which included two future Presidents of the IAAF: Adriaan Paulen and Primo Nebiolo.
Their case was greatly aided by the boycott of the Montreal Olympics in 1976: 28 countries, mostly African nations, refused to take part and protested the IOC’s failure to exclude New Zealand after its rugby team lost in New Zealand earlier that year was on tour in South Africa.
The Olympic Games in Moscow also failed because another boycott was already threatening (in the end 61 countries stayed away in protest against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan).
At the 1978 IAAF Congress in Puerto Rico, Paulen and Nebiolo’s proposal was unanimously accepted and the World Athletics Championships were born, to begin in 1983. The only problem at the time was finding a suitable host city: the vote took place in March 1980, when the Moscow boycott was getting worse by the day.
“That was never a problem on the trip to Helsinki. It was simply supposed to be an athletics meeting at its finest. Helsinki also attracted all the athletics purists from around the world who wanted to be there because they are fans of the sport as opposed to the Olympics where crowds tend to go just because it’s the Olympics.”
— Eamonn Coghlan
Determined to avoid all of this, the IAAF voted for Helsinki, which defeated Stuttgart 11-6 in the final vote; The deciding factor for Helsinki was clearly Finland’s political neutrality.
Nebiolo, the Turin native who drew admiration and opposition in equal measure, reportedly sat with IAAF members outside Helsinki and discussed a possible fee with main sponsor TDK. The proposal was $250,000
“We will ask for a million,” Nebiolo interrupted. You got it.
Some uncertainty remained about participation, so the IAAF announced that it would cover the travel expenses of all participants and provide Helsinki with free board and lodging. It worked; 1,355 athletes from 153 nations attended (more than double the 70 nations that competed in athletics at the Moscow Olympics, and also more than the 124 nations that competed in the following year, 1984, the also boycotted Olympics games in Los Angeles).
In Helsinki there was still no prize money, no world record bonuses and not a single positive doping test – even though the systematic dopers of East Germany were at the top of the medal table with ten gold medals.
Helsinki also pushed athletics into the great professional era – and produced a wealth of well-known names who are still well known today: such as Carl Lewis, Sergei Bubka, Mary Decker, Steve Cram, Grete Waitz, Rob de Castella, Calvin Smith, Edwin Moses, Daley Thompson, Greg Foster.
And our own Eamonn Coghlan, who won the 5,000m after nearly missing out on a medal in Moscow and Montreal: “I think the time had come when the IAAF wanted their own championships, separate from the Olympics,” said Coghlan . “Because there were so many Olympic boycotts back then.
“That was never a problem on the trip to Helsinki. It was simply supposed to be an athletics meeting at its finest. Helsinki also attracted all the athletics purists from around the world who wanted to be there because they are fans of the sport as opposed to the Olympics where crowds tend to go just because it’s the Olympics.”
40 years ago this week, Eamonn Coghlan became the first Irishman to win a gold medal at a World Athletics Championships. Watch RTÉ footage of the closing stages of his win and the medal ceremony, then read his memories of that great day here: https://t.co/06GBPfkCct pic.twitter.com/3qbXOTku0K
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) August 16, 2023
It turned out to be a big payday nonetheless: There was no gold medal prize money, but Coghlan later estimated he’d made “half a million dollars.”
Back then, Ireland sent a team of 11 athletes to Helsinki, coincidentally the same number as to Moscow, and although Regina Joyce ran very well, finishing seventh in the marathon, Coghlan was the only headliner. (Helsinki, however, marked a turning point in John Treacy’s career after he finished 11th in his 10,000m in 28:35.58; determined to change his fortunes, he moved back with his wife and young daughter to the US and started training for the Olympic marathon. The rest is history.)
Helsinki has completely changed the landscape of global athletics in other ways too. It attracted a worldwide television audience of more than a billion and opened up a gold mine for the IAAF and after an equally successful championship in Rome in 1987 the IAAF had already agreed by the third World Championships in Tokyo in 1991 to run them every two years, instead of all four.
[ Eamonn Coghlan, 40 years after his biggest win: ‘Something spiritual happened me that day’ ]
After the 1993 championship in Stuttgart, Carl Lewis famously announced, “This is the last time we race for free,” even though prize money wasn’t introduced until 1997 in Athens (in addition to winning a Mercedes-Benz). path to another reward).
Fast forward to 2023, and on the eve of those championships, Sebastian Coe, President of the World Athletics Championships (formerly IAAF), predicted only good things about Budapest.
“If you’re sitting there as a World Cup predictor, the conditions are there,” said Coe. “It’s not an exact science, it never is. But I think that this year we could well witness a World Championship for the ages when it comes to the quality of the athletes’ performances.
“It’s the biggest event of the year. I never tire of saying that we are a truly global sport. We have 2,000 athletes in Budapest and over 200 competing countries.”
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However, there is an ever-growing list of notable absentees: Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone, one of the biggest favorites to run the 400m, retired with a minor knee problem and her focus, she claims, is on the Paris Olympics next year.
Athing Mu, the American 800m record holder, also in Bobby Kersee’s McLaughlin-Levrone coaching group, seems to share a similar apathy.
Olympic champion and world champion Nafi Thiam from Belgium also withdrew from the heptathlon due to an Achilles tendon injury and is already concentrating again on Paris next summer: “The last part of my preparation was disrupted by Achilles tendon problems and I don’t want to risk that.” complicate and endanger the coming Olympic year,” she said.
Perhaps part of the problem here is the fact that Budapest is the third of five consecutive years to host a premier athletics event on a global scale; the postponed 2020 Olympics in 2021, the World Championships also in 2022 and again in 2025, not forgetting the Paris 2024 Olympics next year.
So, 40 years after Helsinki, has the sport reached another crossroads where the World Championships are somehow diluted in a pre-Olympic year?
“It’s a problem with the sport’s declining profile outside of the Olympics,” said Michael Johnson, who asked Olympic and world champions in the 400-meter dash if athletics’ biggest stars felt this was the case in non-Olympic competitions is not the case are worth your full time and commitment.
American athletics website Citius Mag was also revealing on the subject: “The reaction to this news is pretty unsurprising. People are upset. But not necessarily in Sydney. Bear in mind this news came just days after coach Kersee made some comments about the possibility of Athing Mu training instead of competing this summer, and already there has been plenty of criticism of his methods and commitment to health of the sport.”
At the height of the 1983 championships in Helsinki, Nebiolo declared: “We witnessed one of the greatest sporting events of all time. The best athletes in the world have been here in Helsinki and competed for the prestigious title of World Champion.”
Coe is likely to strike a similar tone next Sunday, although it leaves one wondering why some of the world’s best athletes simply weren’t here, content to pave a different path.
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