The inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship in Budapest has a total prize pot of $10 million, with $150,000 on offer for winners of individual events, offering a significant financial opportunity for athletes over the next three days.
Money was the topic on everybody's lips at athletics' lucrative new event in Hungary. In a sport where finances can often be tight, even at the pinnacle, the prospect of a windfall is serving as motivation for competitors.
Usain Bolt's reaction to the prize money
Usain Bolt, the greatest sprinter of all time, is in town to watch the event. At his peak, he could have walked away with nearly half a million had he triumphed over 100m, 200m and the 4x100m mixed relay, which kicks off proceedings on Friday evening.
Bolt welcomed the money on offer, saying: "It's great to see track and field go in a different direction. I was having a conversation with Asafa (Powell) before I came here and we were talking about that same thing (the prize money) and we thought 'jeez', we missed out on this cash prize. I won a few championships and it still doesn't add up to all the cash. So I think it's big, it's good for the sport, it incentivises athletes to come out and do their best, to show up and be ready. I'm sad I missed out on it but I'm happy for them."
British athletes welcome the financial boost
Mile world record-holder Josh Kerr is among current athletes who have welcomed the bump in prize money, while Britain's sprint star Amy Hunt pointed out that athletics can be an expensive sport at the top level. With four European titles in Birmingham earlier this year, as well as a World Championship silver medal over 200m in Tokyo 12 months ago, Hunt is one of the faces of athletics in the UK.
While that means she can base herself in Italy without financial worries, she knows it is not the case for everyone. She said: "I think financial security is a very taboo topic, but it's also a very human and a very real topic. We all need money every day to survive and live. I'm lucky enough that I've been kind of successful in the last two years and I've got to a place where I'm financially stable enough to live abroad on my own. But there are other athletes in that race who are maybe lower down on the world rankings and don't have the international medals, and it's actually a struggle every day for them."
Hunt added: "Track isn't a particularly expensive sport on the outside, but there's so much travel that goes into this, and looking after your body. Even just buying clean food gets incredibly expensive. It's cheaper and easier to just go to McDonald's, but I won't go to McDonald's, so it's about making sure everyone has the best opportunities. I've seen people who were on my career pathway coming up through the junior ranks pulling away because they didn't have that financial support. So it's great to see this innovation and it really inspires more money to be injected."
Innovations and future plans
Beyond the money, the event will test a host of innovations, including a striking black infield, a live draft for the 200m lanes, a new format for field events and the elimination of ties in vertical jumps – meaning no repeat of Mutaz Essa Barshim and Gianmarco Tamberi's shared gold.
World Athletics president Seb Coe hopes these innovations could be adopted at World Championships and Olympics in future. He said: "We want this championship to be an incubator for change. As a proud Sheffielder, I would call this a blast furnace, ultimately casting what our sport can look like going forward. We want to take some of those innovations into the World Championships and the Olympic Games."
Coe added: "We know that our athletes are in peak condition, you only need to follow their journey through Diamond League this year and other events, to know that they are at the top of their game. We will see Olympic champions, we will see world champions, we will see the newly crowned Diamond League champions from last week in Brussels, freshly-minted world record holders and my goodness, this has been an extraordinary season for that. They are all hungry to compete."
