Coe calls on sport to use Eugene as springboard

LORD COE wants athletics to seize its chance to expand after the first World Championships in America.

World Athletics president Coe is eager to use the championships in Eugene as a springboard to push the boundaries.

The opening weekend last week saw 11.4 million television viewers in the USA which surpassed broadcaster NBC’s coverage of all previous World Championships.

“If you’re at a championship for the first time in the US, and it’s your big moment, it’s the platform,” Coe said, with the championships finishing on Sunday.

“Everybody should have probably recognised that at the end of the 200 metres there was every chance you were going to have a story either about Noah Lyles or Erriyon Knighton.

“It was pretty clear. So what

I’m always interested in, is what the following day is in place?

“Is it really as creative as it couldn’t be? My view is any other business would be sitting there going, right:

There’s every chance this could happen. What do we do the following day?

“So what is the next phase? Has the morning show been booked? Have your affiliates been brought up to speed? Are there pieces that you’ve already bought with the lifestyle magazines?

“It was a bit analogue in the analogue days but when I ran, one of my sponsors was ICI. They booked space in every broadsheet newspaper once when I competed.

“The following day, there was a photograph of me crossing the line, with the caption underneath: yesterday, one of our research assistants had a very good day in the office.

“I knew at the end of the week I was booked on Michael Aspel, Terry Wogan, Woman’s Hour, magazines. They knew what they had.”

Great Britain finished with seven medals after Keely Hodgkinson won 800m silver and the women’s 4x400m squad won bronze in the final event at Hayward Field on Sunday.

It is the best medal haul since 2015, although only Jake Wightman won gold in the 1500m.