It might need first been talked about as a joke, however World Athletics’ proposal to stage a world treadmill championships has advantage and is approach for athletics to faucet into an enormous market
If it appeared like an April Fools’ Day prank maybe that’s as a result of it as soon as was. In 2023, on April 1, Canadian Working Journal revealed an article proudly proclaiming that the “inaugural World Treadmill Championships are coming to Canada”. The occasion, it instructed, was aimed toward broadening the game of working to a wider viewers and making it “extra inclusive to fair-weather runners”.
It even included a fictitious quote from World Athletics explaining that Edmonton was the “supreme vacation spot for the occasion” as a result of “it’s completely freezing” there.
To this point, so amusing. However then got here the latest information that athletics’ governing physique are actively seeking to launch the occasion. What had begun as nothing greater than a throwaway little bit of humour had abruptly moved to the cusp of actuality.
“There are hundreds of thousands of individuals all over the world that simply go to the health club and run on the treadmill,” World Athletics chief government Jon Ridgeon advised the Day by day Mail. “We must always create merchandise for these folks. We must always have a Treadmill World Championships.
“You’re an athlete if you happen to go for a 30-minute run on a treadmill or if you happen to win an Olympic gold medal within the 100 metres. It’s all athletics. We’re working it out for the time being. We can be saying a tech accomplice that we’re going to work with to develop the digital working scene.”
The reception was, to place it mildly, combined. To many athletics followers, Ridgeon’s phrases had been no extra severe than that April Fools’ Day joke. Responding to AW’s Instagram put up in regards to the information, America’s Olympic 110m hurdles finalist Freddie Crittenden stated: “Our World Governing physique is actually attempting to make [a Nintendo] Wii sports activities championships. What are we doing man?”
A number of world, Commonwealth and European 4x400m medalist Conrad Williams wrote: “Pointless. And never wanted.”
Others had been extra supportive. “Signal me up!” stated a number of Commonwealth and European medalist Eilish McColgan. “Clearly, the game has numerous different areas to repair… But it surely could possibly be a great way of connecting our sport with the mass market, day by day runner, who hits the treadmill within the health club. And it’s a much better concept than including one other dash relay, IMO [in my opinion]!”
Her accomplice, former worldwide 800m runner Michael Rimmer, stated he thought “there could possibly be an urge for food for such a content material” and praised the governing physique’s “creativeness”.
Jakob Ingebrigtsen
Athletics, like virtually each sport battling for relevance and altering Twenty first-century consumption patterns, has issues. Athletes will not be sufficiently remunerated, mainstream tv offers are fading, and sponsorship is both missing or obscure (a web based seek for Wanda, the Diamond League’s headline sponsor, brings up a number of outcomes associated to a fictional comedian guide character reasonably than the Chinese language conglomerate that has a 10-year take care of athletics’ premier season-long competitors).
The sector aspect of the game appears set on a path in direction of disappearance, with World Athletics, Michael Johnson’s upcoming Grand Slam Observe and a handful of different daring start-ups all focusing consideration on monitor occasions. So sure, athletics has large points. However that doesn’t imply a World Treadmill Championships must be handled with scorn.
Indoor health club variations of present sports activities are large enterprise. Initially launched in 2020 as a option to proceed the game throughout Covid, indoor triathlon sees the world’s finest rivals cycle on static bikes, run on treadmills and swim in a 50-metre pool, with digital avatars reflecting the progress of every competitor on giant in-venue screens and to tv viewers. Earlier this yr within the London Aquatics Centre, Britain’s Beth Potter pipped Cassandre Beaugrand to the supertri E World Triathlon Championship title just a few months earlier than the Frenchwoman turned the tables to assert the Olympic title. Athletics is, the truth is, the one one of many three particular person triathlon disciplines to not have an indoor health club model of the game.
The World Indoor Rowing Championships have been held yearly since 2018 and see rivals use rowing machines, often known as ergometers. The UCI Biking Esports World Championships launched in 2020, with members driving bikes indoors mounted on turbo trainers.
“We need to produce an athletics model,” confirmed Ridgeon to the Day by day Mail. “If you suppose athletics is essentially the most participated sport on this planet, we should always have our equal.
“We try to innovate throughout an entire vary of areas and future-proof the game as a lot as we are able to.”
Whereas elite athletics struggles for eyeballs, mass participation working occasions and health programmes are booming. A staggering 840,318 folks utilized for the 2025 London Marathon poll. Predominantly indoor coaching regimes like CrossFit (which options a mixture of cardio, body weight and weightlifting workout routines) and Hyrox (consisting of eight kilometres of working interspersed with eight purposeful workout routines) are rising exponentially.
There’s a ripe market of people that might affiliate with a treadmill however neither have the faintest concept the place their native athletics monitor is nor the vaguest inclination to interact with what occurs on it. We’re additionally in an period accustomed to utilizing digital expertise throughout health and train, and seeing it built-in into the elite finish of sport.
Tom Evans
Shifting aggressive working onto a treadmill and linking it with a digital avatar could be anathema to the seasoned athletics follower, however these already in love with the game are inadequate to safeguard its future. Development is paramount and here’s a potential untapped viewers.
“Now we have to embrace and we’ve received to take our sport to the place individuals are,” defined World Athletics president Seb Coe. “That’s essential.”
The nuts and bolts of what any World Treadmill Championships would possibly seem like are fully unknown at this stage. The usage of self-powered curved treadmills (used within the indoor triathlon model) would seem the probably tools, whereas a hyperlink with an interactive on-line platform like Zwift or MyWhoosh might be anticipated. As for distances or race format, it’s protected to imagine center or lengthy distances can be finest suited. So for any sprinters, jumpers, throwers and hurdlers – and their supporters – it is going to virtually actually not be for them.
Tom Evans
However whereas athletics’ myriad battles stay, that’s no motive to knock a possible avenue to develop the game additional. Even when it did begin life as a joke.
» Subscribe to AW journal right here, try our new podcast right here or signal as much as our digital archive of again points from 1945 to the current day right here