From Inside the Games
World Athletics has confirmed that the planned meeting between world and Olympic triple jump champion Christian Taylor and its President Sebastian Coe and chief executive Jon Ridgeon ahead of the World Athlete of the Year awards on Saturday (November 23) here will go ahead.
Taylor, who posted earlier this month that he was “incredibly disappointed” that four events, including his own, had been cut from next year’s Diamond League final, has established a new athletes representative group – The Athletics Association – to act as a mouthpiece and support for track and field competitors.
The timing of the meeting has not yet been confirmed.
Meanwhile France’s world pole vault record-holder Renaud Lavillenie, one of numerous current or former Olympic champions to have signed up with Taylor’s new grouping, is set to attend tomorrow’s first World Athletics Council meeting as newly-elected chair of the Athletes’ Commission, along with four-times shot put world champion and two-time Olympic gold medallist Dame Valerie Adams.
Lavillenie and Adams, of New Zealand, will become the first active athletes to join the World Athletics Council as full voting members, following the governance reforms introduced in 2016, and will serve there for the next four years.
“It’s very important to have athletes on the Council because we see that our sport is evolving and we need to keep the athletes at the centre of the discussion,” Lavillenie said.
“I am very happy to lead a good group of strong athletes who are thinking about the future.
“We need to be part of the decision-making process, not just the subject of the process.
“I am excited to have this new mission and to have these athletes with me.”
