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Athletics New Zealand CEO Cam Mitchell told The Herald newspaper, “We are hopeful this will be a nice positioning piece for sport in general. We see a lot of rugby, cricket, netball and football here but events like this, with at an elite level — don’t come very often.”
Are Indoors a beachhead?
When World Athletics awards a location a global championship (or following an Olympic Games), other major athletics events often follow.
Perhaps with a successful World Indoor Championships, Auckland or another city will see other major athletics events. The country can be creative given the time of year. Typically, indoor events are hosted during the northern hemisphere’s winter. In this case, the weather will be mild toward warm in New Zealand.
World Athletics changed the name of the category of “indoors” to “short track,” to encourage creative ideas with competitions. Records are identified now as “short track,” and “outdoors,” and “non-stadia.” The category of “indoors,” has been removed.
Requirement to hosting
To host the championships a stadium needs a capacity of at least 5000 people. A six-lane oval track, plus eight on the straights for sprints races. Five-thousand seating capacity is a low bar number, smaller cities like Christchurch or Wellington could theoretically host.
For North American and European athletes, staying in New Zealand for some time for warm weather training also has advantages. New Zealand has a powerful past in athletics.
Middle and long-distance training went from the Dark Ages to the modern era during the late 1950s and early 1960s. It all happened with the advent of volume-based and periodized training influenced by Jack Lovelock and pioneered by Arthur Lydiard. The principles of which inform the training of almost all champions today. Champions like Jonathan Walker, Lorraine Moller, Rod Dixon, Peter Snell, Barry Magee, Dick Quax, Murray Halberg, Anne Audain and Alison Roe from the 1960s to the 1980s. More recently, Nick Willis and Jake Robertson have been the beneficiaries of the Lydiard and Lovelock methods. Perhaps Samuel Tanner and Maia Ramsden are the future, as they climb the world rankings in the 1500m event.
It was soon after New Zealand’s dominance, that Finland and Japan had a resurgence in the sport by way of the Kiwis. Greece was the birthplace of athletics. The UK brought us formalized cross-country. And New Zealand created modern training methods; the principles of which continue today.
