Ultimate Championships delivered but can China at the 2027 Worlds?
China didn’t feature much at the Ultimate Championships and Ed Warner questions whether they can at a home World Championships in 2027.
“I might get told off. I just did a race, so I’m allowed to drink what I would like. Thank you so much,” said Lando Norris as he reached for a Coke after the Spanish Grand Prix, rather than a can of Pepsi, a Formula 1 sponsor brand.
“This is one thing that I think we can get right, which is allowing the athletes to represent their own brands versus their country,” said Josh Kerr in his post-race victory interview at the Ultimate Championships, while covering the Nike swoosh on his GB vest with his Brooks shoe.
“I hope the organisation will seriously consider the future of every retired athlete and treat them well, allowing retirement arrangements to be more flexible and giving them more suitable choices,” said Chinese athlete Liu Xiang on accepting a £55,000 state payout 14 years after his last competitive race, rather than be forced to become a coach.
China in your hands
Liu Xiang won gold at both the 2004 Athens Olympics and 2007 World Athletics Championships in Osaka. He carried the hopes of the world’s second most populous nation into its home Beijing Olympics, only to walk off the track after another athlete false-started in his 110m hurdles heat.
Injury had done for those golden hopes and blighted the remaining few years of his career. A torn Achilles at London 2012 proved career-ending.
The news of Liu’s settlement with China’s sports authorities after a lengthy struggle to secure his freedom to choose his own career path makes Norris and Kerr’s brand gripes seem very much like first world problems – even if that label seems increasingly outmoded given China’s current geopolitical and economic strength.
It is a reminder, though, of the stark organisational and financial disparities within world sport.
China won four track and field medals at those Beijing Olympics, although none of them gold. Later, at the Beijing 2015 World Championships, the home nation bagged nine medals, including a gold in the 20km walk. In 2027 the Bird’s Nest stadium will once again host the Worlds.
This time home hopes for gold will rest on the shoulders – pun purely by accident – of female javelin thrower Yan Ziyi. Just 18 years old, she has won the Diamond League and finished second in the Ultimate Championships in recent weeks.
World Champ reckoning
By my reckoning, Yan has racked up over $200,000 in prize money on the athletics circuit this summer. She will likely head to the LA 2028 Olympics as the favourite in her event. One wonders, though, what proportion of her winnings will make their way into a bank account that she has unfettered control of.
Track and field has never been a Chinese sporting strength. China’s second place overall in the Paris 2024 medal table was driven by diving, shooting, weightlifting, table tennis, boxing and gymnastics. In each of these sports the state system has proven its ability to deliver repeat success. Swimming too, although here the shadow of doping is a long one.
Only one other Chinese athlete made it to the Ultimate Championships last weekend, a competition in which the 28 events saw winners from 18 different nations.
One might consider this evidence of the continuing global competitiveness of the sport, but that would be to overlook the shape of distribution of those Ultimate trophies. Only two countries produced more than a single winner: 10 hailed from the USA; two from Italy.
There isn’t a direct read across to America’s medal prospects in LA. The Ultimate Championships didn’t include longer distance races that the USA would have been less likely to excel in; athlete selection didn’t have the traditional limit on numbers per nation, which led to USA-laden fields; and competitors from other continents have had heavier schedules this year, being focused on area competitions such as the European Championships. Nevertheless, expect to hear the Star Spangled Banner on repeat at the Memorial Coliseum.
Brand visibility
Insisting that athletes wore national kit at the Ultimate Championships was a big achievement for World Athletics. From the outside this might seem a bizarre statement, but the power of the major shoe companies is so great that they have effectively bankrolled the sport for decades, holding the authorities to ransom by blocking attempts to organise events in which athletes would be obliged to wear team kit. And this in spite of fan feedback that national vests enhance spectator engagement.
Kerr’s clear statement of his libertarian preference might reflect a general mood among athletes less willing than him to speak out. If so, I hope that World Athletics stands firm in the face of any lobbying by shoe companies and athletes to relax its uniform code for future editions of the Ultimate Championships. Without fans, there is nothing.
Maybe Norris shares Kerr’s frustrations about brand visibility and personal choice. Or perhaps he just prefers the taste of Coca-Cola.
Overall, this new event appears to have been a success. It certainly made for good armchair viewing and beat the previous weekend’s Diamond League Final as a TV spectacle, even though both bulged with great athletic performances.
Diamond League promoters will be worrying that the Ultimate Championships will overshadow their own final in the even-numbered years when both take place in future.
China stake
I hope that the proponents of London’s failed bid to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships will now be looking at the Ultimate Championship as a “go again” opportunity to bid for hosting rights.
They will doubtless be feeling sore after Nairobi won the race for 2029. Like many (although not London’s bidding team I’m sure) I fell into the trap of believing that Britain’s hosting history made it favourite this time around, but with hindsight I can see that World Athletics’s decision was perhaps inevitable.
During Seb Coe’s presidency, World Athletics has taken its flagship event to both the Middle East and United States for the first time and has now opted for a debut in Africa.
India, South America and Oceania will surely all feature as first-time hosts too in the years ahead under future presidents. European cities, including London, will need to look widely for hosting opportunities amid this crowd of aspirant hosts.
Meantime, you might like to place a little more weight of expectation on Yan Ziyi’s young shoulders and mark her out for glory in LA and Beijing.
Ed Warner is chair of Sussex Cricket and GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com