World Athletics Ultimate Championship: some bizarre choices

In June World Athletics announced the creation of the Ultimate Championship to be held in Budapest across three evenings on 11-13 September 2026. Each session will be of three hours duration and the participants will represent their national teams. There will be 16 athletes in each track event, 8 in each field event and 8 relay teams. 

The good

The year at the midpoint between two olympiads is usually a low-tone one. Of course, there is always the Diamond League and it's the year where the continental championships can gather the discipline's elite, at least as far as European championships are concerned. By introducing the Ultimate Championship, World Athletics offers to the best athletes of the world one more occasion to shine. 

And it is clear that they will come, not only for glory but also for the prizes which are really very substantial: the champions will receive 150000 $, the total prize budget being 10 dollars.

Having a championship in mid-September will necessarily push the Diamond League meetings to earlier dates, making it a rather short season for the vast majority of athletes. 

Also, it was announced that the selection will be based primarily on world rankings. I don't know how "primarily" is to be understood in this context, but I am always wary when there is a question of world rankings. 

The only good thing with such a selection is that the athletes will not have to be subjected to national trials and can focus exclusively on the championships.

The bad

Things start getting bad is when it comes to the events program and in particular the field ones. 

I don't have any remark concerning the track individual events: 100 m, 200 m, 400 m, 800m, 1500 m,  5000 m, 100 m/110 m hurdles, 400 m hurdles. It is not clear yet which distances will be run in direct final and which in semis and final. There will probably be semis up to 800 m and direct final for the 5000 m, with the 1500 m being a question mark. 

But the choice of field disciplines is really strange. Pole vault, high jump and long jump are OK, but why is there a women's only triple jump? (Probably Lord Sebastian is a fan of Y. Rojas who would be coming back after a year spent backstage due to injury).

Adding the men's event wouldn't have burdened the timing. But perhaps the sponsors had put a strict limit to the number of events.

The ugly

But where things are really ugly it's with the throws. Who in their right mind could select javelin throw, a discipline where there has been a single 70+ woman's throw over the past decade (M.Andrejczyk 71.40 m in 2021) and where 2/3 of the men's 90+ throws are more than a decade old? Discus, both men's and women's would have been a far better choice.  

As for the choice of men's hammer throw it's a real mystery. There is just one great hammer thrower today: E. Katzberg. Fajdek and Nowicki have been great in their day but are reaching the end of their careers. Perhaps World Athletics chose the discipline to please the Hungarian organisers. Let's not forget that B. Halasz was third in the Doha, 2019 and the Budapest,2023 World's and second in this year's Olympics (and also second in the Europeans in 2022 and 2024). But, in my eyes, the men's shot put would have been a far better choice.

Having criticised the choice of the field events I would like to conclude my article on a more positive note. It concerns the relays. Back in 2017 I published a post entitled "Mixed relays, hurrah", celebrating the introduction of the 4x400 m mixed race in the program of the World Relays. The event is thriving, being now part of both the World Championships and the Olympics program. Moreover the fact that the order of the runners is fixed (man-woman-man-woman) had made the event much easier to follow.

But in that article I was also making a wish (a prophesy?). I was writing:

Speaking of mixed relays it's the 4x100 m that I would like to see even more than the 4x400 m. The short relay depends crucially on delicately balancing the speeds of the two runners at the exchange of the baton. So, adding the extra difficulty of different top speeds for male and female runners would make this event even more challenging. I cross my fingers for such an event to become part of official competitions. 

And now WA has added the mixed 4x100 m to the Ultimate Championships program. I am impatient to see how this event will turn out in real-life conditions. And I guess that we will not have to wait till 2026. The countries that would like to qualify are well advised to start preparing, organising mixed 4x100 m relays at national level. (And I am curious to see if the US team who is botching two out of three competitions with the men's 4x100 m relay will fare better with the team stabilised by the female presence).

In case you were wondering, there has never been any thought about a combined event in the form, say, of a triathlon. A speed-force event with long jump, shot put and 400 m or a more technical one with long jump, javelin and 110 hurdles would be compatible with the highly focused program of the Ultimate Championship and would be a recognition of the combined event stars. But, of course, one can dream.

The athletes of the year 2024

World Athletics surprised us once more by changing the year's best athletes awards. Last year they had nominated 3+3 year's best in track, field and road. This year I was expecting something similar, all the more so since they had kept this classification when they named 6+6 finalists. But when the winners were announced we discovered that there were in fact 3+3 winners in categories plus 1+1 overall winners. 

So this year's best athletes are L. Tebogo and S. Hassan. To say that I missed them in my predictions is an understatement. As you know my favourites were Tentoglou and Thiam (with perhaps Duplantis and McLaughlin as more realistic choices). But, I would never have predicted the WA choice. 

And what is curious, the 3+3 best nomination was also preserved in this year's classification. So McLaughlin was best women on track (Tebogo being obviously best for the men's category). As I have "predicted" (given Lord Sebastian's sympathy for Ukraine) Mahuchikh is best woman for field. (But I am a fan of Thiam and I cannot understand why she has ben snubbed). Duplantis beat Tentoglou for men's best in field (something I can live with). Hassan and Tola were nominated best for "out of stadium" and Hassan went on to win the global title. Of course, I am happy with Hassan's nomination but, to tell the truth, I was not expecting it.

My single correct prediction is that of M. Furlani as best male rising star. On the female side A. Topic was clearly a victim of her injury during the Olympics. Had she won a medal there, she would definitely have topped the list. But the nomination of Almayew is perfectly acceptable.

In my postscript to my article on finalists I commented that I found only one photo worth mentioning among the three finalists but I was afraid that WA would select a photo of Lyles. Well I was too pessimistic. In the end it was the photo of the final sprint between Hassan and Assefa in the olympic marathon that won the prize.

Since that was my preferred photo, I count it as a correct prediction 🙂.

Speaking if photos, WA were good to their words and did indeed publish a collection of the shortlisted photos. You can find them in what they call a digital exhibition on WA's site. Alas, there is nothing exceptional about this year's photos. If I had to choose three finalists I would have chosen (apart from the Hassan-Assefa one) the photo of Barega with Aregawi and the photo of Neugebauer in the sand pit. (I cannot understand how the photo of the men's 100 m finish could make it to the shortlist. There are hundreds of photos like this. Perhaps it was chosen because it's the one where Lyles won he gold medal).

Just when I was sitting down to write this article, World Athletics announced the name of the Fair Play award winner: S. Skotheim. He was one of the favourites for a medal in the olympic decathlon (after his silver in the Europeans) but then he no-heighted in the pole vault, losing all chances. Still, he decided to pursue the competition and paced his compatriot M. Rooth in the 1500 m, helping him secure the gold medal. I find the choice of Skotheim an excellent one. (Also because it is bringing a combined-events' athlete to the limelight).

Where I sing the praise of Lord Sebastian

I don't like Sebastian Coe. I am always criticising his half-baked decisions and his resistance to change. The only domains where he appears decisive are money and politics. But I hate him for his decision to ban the Russian (and Byelorussian) athletes from international athletics competitions on purely political criteria. But this article will be different.

As you probably know, Coe is candidate for the position of the IOC president. His chances are more than slim. He is in bad terms with the current IOC president T. Bach, and the eligibility rules have been recently modified in a subtle way so as to block his path to the presidency. But a few days ago he gave an interview in which he made clear his stance concerning  the inclusion of transgender athletes (as well as those with DSD) competing in women’s events. He believes  that the current IOC guidelines on the matter are ambiguous, and it is necessary to establish clear and unequivocal rules. In his own words

"It must be a clear policy, and the International Federations must have some flexibility," he explained. "But it is the IOC's responsibility to create that landscape. For me, it is a very clear proposition: if you don't protect the women's category, or if you're in any way ambiguous about it for any reason, it won't end well for women's sport. I come from a sport where that is absolutely sacred".

We have all seen during the Paris Olympics, two boxers, from Algeria and Taiwan, participate in the women's tournament while they had been barred from competing in the 2023 World Championships because, according to the International Boxing Association, both fighters had "male DNA, with XY chromosomes". With the IOC blessing, they won olympic gold medals.

Thanks to Lord Sebastian Athletics has managed to rid the discipline from athletes like Semenya, Niyonsaba, Mboma, to name but a few. 

But the battle is far from over. The question for transwomen participation in female sport has by now become political. People, with progressive ideas and who do not understand anything in sport, blinded by the ambient woke-ism, maintain that the participation must be on the basis of self-determined gender. While I do not share the attitude of the (far-)right, who condemns all LGBTQ tendencies, I draw an impassable line when it comes to sports. Women have fought for ages in order to obtain the right to compete in sports. No supposedly right-thinking arguments can despoil them of their hard-won rights. Transwomen should never be allowed to participate in women's sports.

The IOC should have settled this argument long ago. Unfortunately they keep pretending to be unaware of the problem. And their framework on fairness, inclusion and non-discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sex variations has opened the road to trans-women (i.e. men) to invade cis-women (i.e. genuine women) sports.

Scientists like Ross Tucker and Emma Hilton have been for years explaining these basic truths to everybody who was willing to listen. They have co-authored an article entitled "Fair and Safe eligibility criteria fo Women's Sport"

Their solution is articulated around the following points

(a) recognising that female sport that excludes all male advantage is necessary for female inclusion; 
(b) recognising that exclusion from female sport should be based on the presence of any male development, rather than current testosterone levels; 
(c) not privileging legal “passport” sex or gender identity for inclusion into female sport;
and 
(d) accepting that sport must have means of testing eligibility to fulfil the category purpose.

Athletes who experience male-typical development from testes producing testosterone, have physiological differences creating athletic advantages and safety risks, even in athletes with XY DSDs who might have been observed as female at birth. The issue is whether male development occurred. This is binary, and is answered by a screen followed by tests run in series (in rare cases) to inform decisions. This is infinitely better than subjective visual judgments of who qualifies and who does not. The current technology enables a screening procedure for “sports sex” that involves a simple cheek swab to determine sex chromosomes. This screen can be performed reliably and quickly.

In case you are wondering about the differences between men and women here is a graphic from a work of R. Tucker showing that the differences can be huge when it comes to force.

Still people, blinded by ill-construed feminism, maintain that there is no real difference and all this is a social construct. Just read the arguments of the "feminist sport approach". Unfortunately, more often than not, the champions of these ideas are women. 

Fortunately there still are some sane voices.  Reem Alsalem, the United Nations’ special rapporteur on violence against women and girls in her report on “Violence against women and girls in sports”, recommends that female categories in organised sport be only accessible to cisgender women. And in an interview, in the wake of the Olympics boxing debacle, she proposed the reintroduction of sex testing and advocated for the cheek swab test. In her own words: "We know that there are simple, efficient, dignified ways of testing sex, that are notinvasive, that are cheap and that are reliable".

The International Consortium on Female Sport, an organisation fighting for the preservation of fairness in women's sport published an pen letter addressed to the IOC urging them to review and re-establish its sex-based eligibility guidelines (female sex verification was abandoned in 1999) and restore safety and fairness for female athletes. The Olympic Charter states that athletes are entitled to participate in Olympic sports without discrimination based on sex. The ICFS asserts that “there can be no greater example of sex discrimination than allowing a male athlete to compete against women and seize from them a medal, a placing or even a chance to compete at all”. Categorisation by gender identity, which forms the backbone of the IOC position, does not guarantee fairness or safety for female athletes. 

To put it in a nutshell, the IOC position simply fails to recognise the rights of female athletes. So, for this once I am praising Lord Sebastian for his uncompromising stance concerning women's sport, and the policy he will implement if he is elected at the IOC presidency. However, unfortunately, the IOC assembly will probably choose, Bach's protégée, K. Coventry over him and one of the first things that she will do, following in Bach's steps, will be to allow men to take over women's sport, essentially killing it.