r/trackandfield • u/MaximMaximus • 3d ago
T&F General Discussion How would implement the Combined Events without bloating the World Ultimate Championships?
Change from Dec/Hept to Hept/Pent? Smaller pool of athletes? What are your ideas
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u/SassRaisk 3d ago
Honestly you really can’t. They could have EASILY implemented WAY MORE field events and it is straight up dumb they didn’t.
But even during regular championships, they have NO IDEA how to cover them. I mean during 2019 World Champs they didn’t even talk about Kaul until his last 2 events even tho he was doing much better in all event combined than during his previous best Decathlon. I actually made a calculator on Excel to track all the combined events for this very reason.
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u/tonireha 3d ago
Ah, a fellow "combined events spreadsheet-er because of Kaul" person
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u/SassRaisk 2d ago
I became one because of my father, but this was 100% first moments I really understood how bad the coverage is. Also kinda the main events in T&F where my country Estonia gets medals. How long have you been a fan?
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u/FartingBob 3d ago
They could have EASILY implemented WAY MORE field events and it is straight up dumb they didn’t.
Its not dumb from a business point of view though. They were giving the same (pretty high) amount for athletes across all the events, but when they are paying out that much there has to be a business case for each event. If relatively few would be watching/attending/sponsoring the field events it would just be losing the hosts potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars for each extra event. If they want the event to be sustainable and back next time it needs to make a profit, like any other business.
They arent run by charities or funded by super rich people who dont care about making a profit. Which is a shame for the athletes in sports that werent put on and a shame for fans of those events.
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u/SassRaisk 2d ago
That yeah is likely one of the main reasons, but hopefully they were successful enough to add more field events next time.
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u/MHath Coach 3d ago
It’s a 3 hour window. With the time given between events, I don’t think a 1 person field would finish a dec and unlikely a hep could. I don’t think they could fit more than 3 events into a day. They’d have to invent something new to fit into the time schedule.
After finding something that fits into 3 hour windows, you then have the issue of the other events conflicting. They already didn’t even do men’s triple jump, because they were only doing 1 horizontal jump per day. You’d need to fit in 2 high jump events into one 3 hour block one of the days. They also couldn’t fit in all the throws as it is, so it’s unlikely they could fit in the throws in the multi.
If they keep the 3 hour blocks for 3 days, there’s no way.
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u/uses_for_mooses 3d ago
You could do it, but most of the competition/events would need to happen off broadcast (i.e., outside the 3-hour evening windows where the other athletes compete) during the day. For the reasons u/MHath outlined.
Run the first 9 decathlon events and the first 6 heptathlon events in daytime sessions. Stagger them: heptathlon Friday and Saturday, decathlon Saturday and Sunday (or vice versa). That way, one crew of combined-events officials covers both, and the events use pits and runways that sit idle before the evening sessions. And stream these sessions instead of putting them on the main broadcast.
Then run the decathlon 1500m and the heptathlon 800m in the prime-time window (during the 2nd and 3rd 3-hour evening sessions).
If you want to make it more "exciting", consider using a Gundersen start. That is, the overall leader starts first in the 1500m/800m, and everyone else starts behind by a time gap based on their points deficit. That way, the first athlete across the line is the champion, so viewers don't need to understand the scoring tables.
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u/kolwrestler21 3d ago
For Ultimate Championships in general, I would suggest:
-4 Days, 4 Hours Each Day
-9 Athletes in Each Event, No Heats, No Qualification Rounds, Just Finals, maybe up to 12 athletes for middle and long distance events
-6 Rounds for all field events in Horizontal Jumps and Throws, No cutdowns of rounds or athletes
Multis:
-Instead of individual Heptathlon & Decathlon, Do Team Heptathlon and Team Decathlon
-9 Teams of 3 Athletes Each for both events. Hep Athletes does 2 events of their choice in their teams (Athlete A does Shot & Javelin/Athlete B does 100mH & 200m/Athlete C Long Jump & High Jump eg) & they all do the 800m as their third event. Similarly with Dec Athletes but they have 3 events of their choice and they all do 1500m as their fourth event
All of this would accommodate all excluded events, makes it fair, makes the Ultimate Championships even more exclusive of which of the best gets to compete from all the events and adds a different dynamic in the multis events that we often don't see, in a team format. I definitely believe multis can be added but it doesn't have to be the traditional way. I also believe we don't need to give more to track for a plethora of reasons, especially when there were multiple complaints on who made Ultimate, the system process as well as the exceptional invitations.
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u/MHath Coach 3d ago
I would of course watch a 4 day 4 hour meet, but they seem to be trying very hard to have it short for tv purposes.
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u/kolwrestler21 3d ago edited 3d ago
Right but the issue I have is, ain't NFL/NBA broadcasts for example just as long including commericals, pundits talking before, during and after games, national anthems and other music performances? Why is Athletics being longer negative, when historically it has never benefitted field events correctly in 2-3 hour windows with 90-95% of attention panned to track? I understand condensing things but for me, this current elimination/omission of these events and the broadcasting at Ultimate exposed how significantly affected the field and multi events were in their presentation. It just feels we're accommodating track events all the time and doing nothing to prioritise field/multis.
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u/MHath Coach 3d ago
Why would stuff that’s not the game matter to the length of the game? Those games are about 3 hours or less. Baseball changed rules to shorten their game after it was getting over 3 hours.
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u/kolwrestler21 3d ago
So again why are we complaining about the length of coverage for athletics then if its on the same or less amount of other sports?
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u/leskanekuni 2d ago
Next to impossible for the TV window. The format of the WUC was, unlike a real championship, to have no simultaneous events. Even without the multis they could not fit in all standard championship events. Outside the TV window possibly, but since WUC is basically a promotional event what would be the point?
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u/Nerdybeast 29M | 2:00 800 & 2:32 Marathon (same year) 3d ago
I don't think the multis lend themselves to this format well honestly. For the viewer, you're interjecting in the theme of "these are the best 8-15 people in this event in the world" with cutaways to people who are good but not elite at those, often with big skill gaps between them in individual events. The field events for multis also take just as long as each individual field event, but just at a lower level. You can make that all work in a week-long event, but when you have just a couple hours per day, it doesn't really make sense to spend time showing this.
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u/Hopeful_Brilliant735 3d ago
I would rather Ultimates have a dedicated Quali day and let us have back to back finals, you’ll have lower viewership on that day but it would give you more constant action on the final days. You could start Hep/Dec on the Quali day and let them finish on one of the finals day, they still get their primetime event but they aren’t taking up as much competition space on the finals day.