PuraVida Sports

By Elias Makori, Managing Editor

World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has celebrated 2025 as an extremely productive year in athletics, terming last September’s World Championships in Tokyo as “the most successful in history” and highlighting the fact that athletics is now entering a “golden age” with revenues at his organisation’s Monaco headquarters having increased by over 25 percent over the last four years. 

Briton Coe, a two-time Olympic 1,500 metres champion, twice silver medalist over the 800m and multiple middle-distance world record holder, also gyrated over his international federation’s strong financial base that saw the highest number of partnerships (14) ever recorded at the Tokyo World Championships which drew 1.4 billion viewer hours across 234 territories or countries. 

Over 600,000 tickets were sold at the Tokyo championships that were highlighted by sold-out evening sessions with Coe – who took over the World Athletics reins in Monaco on August 19, 2015 – excited about the fresh talents coming through.

“We are now talking about a bandwidth of talent on the track indoors, outdoors, road, cross country, and field obviously. If you look at the World Athletics Awards two weeks ago, we were celebrating an extraordinary bandwidth, particularly of young talent coming through. That is hugely important for us,” Coe said on a media conference call this week.

Africa’s hosting of major championships

The World Athletics boss, meanwhile, continued to drum up his support for Africa’s hosting of major global athletics competitions, disclosing that Nairobi’s “strong bid” to host the World Athletics Championships in 2029 or 2031 is currently being reviewed by World Athletics’ Evaluation Panel.

He noted that Kenya successfully hosted the age-group World Championships (World Under-18 Championships in 2017 and World Under-20 Championships in 2021) and was confident that Botswana would also host a fine World Athletics Relays Championships on May 2 and 3 in Gaborone.

The World Athletics President, on his traditional end-of-year call with a panel of selected global athletics journalists this week – including Pura Vida Sports Africa –also hinted at changes in the voting system for the World Athlete of the Year Awards which continue to draw controversy.

“We have always been clear – and a chunk of my Council is clear – that at the right time, this (Africa hosting the World Athletics Championships) needs to happen,” he said on an African bid for the World Athletics Championships.

“In my time as President, we have had two World Championships (Youth and Juniors) in Nairobi… we had in 2017 the World Cross Country Championships in Kampala, Uganda, and we have the World Relays in Gaborone in a few months’ time,” Coe explained.

Strong Kenyan bid

“This is really important, and in fact one of the first things I did when I became President was to make sure that we got a Diamond League into Africa by way of Rabat and I want to see more of that.”

He spoke of Nairobi’s strong World Championships bid being before World Athletics’ Evaluation Panel: “There is already a very strong bid (for the 2029/31 World Athletics Championships) that’s already in from Nairobi and that’s now with the Evaluation Panel and I know that they will make the right observations to our Council when it matters.

“Everybody is aware that Africa is really working to come of age in our World Championship status.”

Coe said athletics is entering a “golden age” highlighted by the unprecedented success of the World Athletics Championships in Tokyo.

“On any metrics, Tokyo was our most successful World Championships, both in global reach, commercial partnerships – we went into those World Championships with more partnerships than we have ever had, some 14 partnerships, which is unprecedented,” Coe told journalists.

“The raised profile of the athletes made a huge difference that our own commercial revenues have increased over 25 percent in the last four years, which have been challenging years.

“Across all our WAS (World Athletics Series) events in 2025 we had 1.4 billion viewer hours, and that was recorded across 234 territories or countries. The big chunk of that economic impact came out of Tokyo.

“In Tokyo alone, we sold significantly over 600,000 tickets – every evening session was sold out. I was please because, in a way, we pushed towards a slightly different concept in Tokyo – to be absolutely clear that our evening sessions were the crescendo for the day and that people buying tickets knew that that’s what they got in the evenings.

“For 84 countries to leave a World Championships with either a finalist or a top 8 finisher is unprecedented. There is no sport that has that global reach at a World Championship. When you look back 30 years at the Tokyo World Championships in 1991, it was 47 countries (with either a finalist or a top 8 finisher).”

Training of coaches, referees

Coe also spoke passionately about the sport’s technical development assistance, disclosing that 1,200 coaches, 26 percent being women, were trained and certified this year at Level One and Level Two with over 700 officials completing World Athletics referees’ courses, 36 percent of these being women.

“It will be a huge season next year as we’ve got six WAS (World Athletics Series) events, and within the first few days of the year already, we will be in Tallahassee (Florida) for the World Cross Country Championships and we’re back in the US again in August for the under-20s in Eugene,” Coe looked into 2026.

“We also have the World Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland, and again, pleasingly, probably the biggest single event we have been able to stage – the World Relays Championships – in Gaborone, Botswana, will be a very important moment for Africa because we want to do everything we can to help Africa create a track record of delivering our major events.

“It is indicative of the global reach of the sport that we have WAS events in six different continents next year, and it’s important because in a complicated, complex world where multilateral systems are beginning to uncouple, we are actually in there working on the development of the sport and in a commercial capacity as well.”

World Athletics recently unveiled the “Ultimate Championship”, a three-day, high-profile meeting of Olympic and World champions alongside Diamond League winners that will be organized in Budapest, Hungary, from September 11 to 13 next year.

“This is a big moment. It’s a very different format, a different model for the athletes, a very different model for host cities… it’s a glimpse of the future,” Coe explained.

“We still have the World Championships as sacrosanct but this new model matters, and it’s not just because of the historic $10 million prize pot, we really want something that reads all action… It’s three hours a night over three nights and its unashamedly aimed at increasing our footprint across broadcastable offerings.”

Ultimate Championship’s future secure

Coe explained that World Athletics reimagined the format to eliminate downtime by having a condensed schedule of only semi-finals and finals.

“There will be a new field events format featuring dynamic height progression and continuous athlete filtering. It is designed to maximize the amount of time at the business end of our competition. It will be a reimagined spectacle for our athletes and spectators,” he noted.

“We will also be showcasing one of our new innovations which is the 4×100 metres mixed relay – there’s lot to look forward to and I look forward to sharing the year with you. Thank you for being more than passengers on this journey,” Coe told the journalists.

The Ultimate Championship is the third latest innovation in track and field following two recent arrivals – the failed Grand Slam Track and increasingly successful, women-only Athlos Championship in New Jersey which was started by USA tennis star Serena Williams’ husband and internet entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian and has already held two action-packed editions.

Grand Slam Track, launched early this year by USA’s former World and Olympic 400 metres champion Michael Johnson and boasting a prize money kitty of $12.6 million has since filed for bankruptcy after failing to pay athletes following its inaugural edition with debts said to be between $10 million and $50 million.

Coe assured that the Ultimate Championship’s structure and future have been well thought through: “I have always welcomed new thoughts about formats, investment and innovation. I take comfort from the fact that people want to invest in our sport which means we are creating a platform that is an investable proposition,” he said.

“I’ve always made it clear that you need to have clear, concrete ingredients in that mix. Innovation without a sustainable business plan or a financial model or world class execution will probably only impact on one key client group, and that’s the athletes.

“There are over 20 people here (at World Athletics/ Monaco headquarters) and elsewhere working on giving our best shot at the innovative product that Ultimate Championship will be… you have to have to have innovation, but it has to be a fusion of reality and practical application.”

Support from media appreciated

The World Athletics President also paid a glowing tribute to athletics media for their support for the sport over time: “I never get tired of telling the youngest practitioners in sport that longest and truest sponsor that any of us will have, including the athletes – and I know that from my experience – are the media, particularly those that write about our sport day-in-day-out.

“We don’t always agree with what you write but, my goodness, you are the conduit, the bridgehead, for those people that we need to reach out to and you are often the ones adding clarity and understanding to what is a complex sport and in a growingly complex world – thank you for the inseparable role for the success of last year.”

World Championships at end of season

Coe welcomed the idea of hosting the World Athletics Championships at the end of the season, as was the case with Tokyo this year, saying he held discussions with top athletes, including Swedish pole vault star Mondo Duplantis, Norwegian hurdler Karsten Warholm and Kenyan middle-distance great Faith Kipyegon who were all in support of the idea.

“I can’t give you a definitive answer across every athlete, but I can give you two contributions that can help put this into perspective – In Zurich I had dinner with some athletes and I spoke to Mondo, Carsten, Faith and they were happy they had the opportunity at the end of a long season to go away and regroup.

“Mondo and Kersten said they look forward to that opportunity. It is imperative that every year, at the right broadcastable moment, we have a billion people watching our sport. We can’t go a year without that. The majority of the athletes have accepted that.”

Coe added that there were also discussions ongoing regarding integrating cross country running into the Winter or Summer Olympic programmes saying the time is right for such discussions with the change of guard at the International Olympic Committee (IOC) after the election of Zimbabwe’s decorated Olympic swimming star Kirsty Coventry as IOC President.

Coe described Coventry – who beat him in the race to the IOC Presidency at the Olympic body’s elections in Costa Navarino, Greece, last March – as a leader who enjoys an athlete-centred and sport-driven focus and who would welcome these discussions at this early stage of her presidency.

Need for AI in war against doping

On matters doping, Coe proposed the adoption of Artificial Intelligence to “turbo-charge the testing process” and bust cheats.

“We’ve got the governance, we’ve got the guarantees, we’ve got the minimum compliance but we nee to go beyond that and really drive into intelligence testing,” he said.

“We’ve got to utilize AI more effectively because that allows us to turbo-charge and target those athletes we really want to – it’s a simple mantra for me: it’s the right athlete at the right time at the right place. We need to drive that with the right level of funding and determination.”

Sweden’s multiple world record-breaking pole vaulter Armand “Mondo” Duplantis and USA’s 400 metres star Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone were named the overall World Athletes of the Year in Monaco last month and while there was no question about Duplantis, analysts questioned McLaughlin-Levrone’s selection ahead of Kenya’s Beatrice Chebet, double gold medallist (5,000m, 10,000m) at the World Championships in Tokyo who also set a new world record in the 5,000m (13 minutes, 58.06 seconds).

She was unbeaten over the 5,000m and 10,000m throughout the season.

“We are reviewing the voting system – it’s a democratic vote and we respect the results but, again, we want to make sure that the voting structure is optimizing our opportunity to promote and celebrate the best of their generation. I can tell you there’s a review underway,” Coe assured.

elias.makori@ymail.com