U.S. Track: All It Needs Is An Audience

In a country where the government-licensed bookmakers will give you 10-1 odds this week on whether the temperature will break 100 degrees here this sizzling summer, it stands to reason that track and field, with more races than an average thoroughbred meeting at Glorious Goodwood or Royal Ascot, would be among the more popular sports in the United Kingdom.

Every day over the past few weeks there have been bold headlines and in-depth coverage of “athletics” - as it is called in this corner of the planet - leading up to the start of the world championships this weekend in Goteborg, Sweden. TV coverage will be extensive, too, with impressive ratings expected throughout Europe.

The same cannot be said for the interest in the sport in the United States, where track and field enjoys its greatest popularity during the Olympics, and then only in events in which American athletes are among the favorites. With the possible exception of Carl Lewis, Jackie Joyner-Kersee or Michael Johnson, the average American sports fan probably would have a hard time naming many other world-class U.S. athletes, let alone those from other countries.

Starting today, ABC, ESPN and ESPN2 will try to change some of that with 20-1/2 hours of same-day, tape-delayed coverage over nine days, including 4-1/2 hours on ABC this weekend and five more next Saturday and Sunday. American TV even has paid a rights fee of $1.25 million to get in on the action, banking that there will be enough interest in the summer before the Atlanta Olympics to justify that expense and turn a modest profit.

Over the past few years, most of the track and field on American TV was subsidized by corporate sponsorship, specifically by Mobil, which paid $2 million a year to underwrite a series of indoor and outdoor meets. But after 10 years as a major player in the sport, Mobil is dropping out this fall for a variety of reasons, many of them having to do with its unhappiness with United States Track & Field, the sport’s governing body in America.

Mobil people were shocked last winter, for example, when they learned only a few days before that the promoter of an indoor meet in Reno had been allowed by UST&F to permit casino gambling on certain events. They also had grown disillusioned over the years with UST&F being run more like a philanthropic institution than a major sport in an era when the competition for corporate sponsorship has become so intense. Oh yes, the ratings were generally dreadful, too.

“Track and field has to get itself together in terms of management,” said Carol Lewis, sister of Carl, a former participant and now an analyst for ABC/ESPN over the next week. “Losing the Mobil contract has really hurt the sport. These people have to say, ‘Hey, there’s something wrong here. We have to start running this like a business, because it’s a very big business.’ People are making millions of dollars running down the track, and our management doesn’t reflect that.

“Most of the people who run it now are track coaches. They should be coaching track. The person running our sport should be a businessman, getting sponsorship money, raising funds. That’s not what a track coach does. In Europe, the sport keeps growing. Here, it hasn’t happened, and if they don’t get it together, they’ll lose even more sponsors. When some of the current stars retire after the Olympics, the U.S. will not be a big story, and that will hurt the sport even more.”

Lewis said she hopes to talk about some of those issues over the course of the telecasts, as will Craig Masback, another ABC analyst and former world-class competitor. These days, he’s got a day job as a Washington communications lawyer, but he still has his finger on the pulse of a sport suffering from clogged arteries.

Masback is hoping that the TV exposure during the world championships, coupled with heightened interest in the following Olympic year, will offer new life for track and field in America. He also believes TV coverage has to change to bring out the drama and emotion he’s seen as a competitor and commentator for years.

“This is one of the world’s greatest sporting events,” he said of the world championships. “You’ve got 204 countries involved, it’s universal. As a broadcaster, we have to convey the essence of the sport: who runs the fastest, who jumps higher and longer, who throws it farther then everyone else.

“Unfortunately, coverage has often evolved into cookie-cutter segments that don’t convey the emotion. We need to linger on a race, show the victory lap, show the false starts that build tension in the sprints, show the 100 meters as a heavyweight boxing match, with a big buildup and just as much electricity before the gun goes off as there is before the bell in a big fight.”

Kim Belton, who will produce the coverage in Goteborg for ABC and ESPN, said in a recent interview he’s planning to do some of that, and also would like to avoid making this meet a jingo jangle of America vs. the world.

“We don’t want to make it a U.S. broadcast as much as show the international aspect of it,” Belton said. “We’re going to highlight as many of the stars as we can. We’ll try to tell their stories. If you look at it, I think the ESPN coverage will likely be more event-driven. They’ll do the best-of-the-day stuff, the heats. It’ll be race-oriented.

“In our (ABC) weekend coverage, with three hours, we can tell stories as well as show events. I just think it’s all very compelling television. It’s viewer friendly. You’ve got size, quickness, speed, endurance, mano-a-mano. It’s got everything.”

Save for an American audience. At least for now.