© Copyright – 2024 – Athletics Illustrated

The sport of athletics will be featured in a six-episode documentary series leading up to the 2024 Paris Olympic Games this summer.

The Netflix series is being produced by Box to Box Films. This is the same production company who produced other sport-specific series’ Drive to Survive, Break Point and Full Swing. Paul Martin, James Gay-Rees, Warren Smith, Dan Bradley and Dara Horenblas are involved as they were with the other sports series that provided much success for Netflix.

The cameras followed athletes around during the 2023 Wanda Diamond League and the 2023 Budpaest World Athletics Championships. The focus is on the sprinters.

Who are the main characters?

Noah Lyles will be featured as America’s apparent answer to Usain Bolt of Jamaica. Also, in the series is Christian Coleman and Dina Asher-Smith among others.

“I’m pretty excited,” Lyles said. “I’d say more than showing a personality, I love telling a story. Looking at 2023 it’s probably my best-written story so far. And then seeing how competitive it was throughout the whole process, nobody really showing that they were going to back down just because a 200m guy said they were going to come down to 100m I think makes it even more entertaining.”

Sebastian Coe echoed Lyles’ press conference from Budapest about how there is no sport as global and accessible in the world more than athletics.

“There’s no sport on the planet that can claim that,” Coe said. Winning a track and field medal, he said. “[It is] “statistically tougher to win than in any other sport. And that’s why everything we do is to promote the cause and give them great exposure”.

“The thing that really surprised [the producers] when you go to a World Championships and on the first day you’re celebrating gold medals from Dominican and Ecuador, you know that you are in a truly global sport.”