World Athletics Ultimate Championship opens with record $10m prize pot

The “best of the best” successful athletics are preparing to vie successful the inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship that gets nether mode successful Budapest this weekend.

The three-day contention volition spot 26 Olympic champions from Paris, 26 satellite champions from Tokyo past year, and this season’s apical athletes conflict it retired to beryllium crowned the champion successful way and field.

Recommended Stories

• list 1 of 4‘Don’t judge successful paying athletes’: IOC’s Coventry stirs societal media storm
• list 2 of 4Russia stance volition beryllium defended successful court, pledges World Athletics main Coe
• list 3 of 4Dos Santos and Russell acceptable satellite records successful ‘crazy’ Zurich Diamond League
• list 4 of 4Adidas faces boycott calls implicit run featuring erstwhile Israeli soldier

Many instrumentality to the stomping crushed successful the Hungarian superior aft successes astatine the 2023 World Championships, portion others person racked up planetary titles aft breakout performances passim the year.

Here’s Al Jazeera’s all-to-know usher to the meet:

Who, what, wherever and erstwhile astatine the Ultimate Championship?

The Ultimate Championship is an invite-only contention featuring the Olympic golden medallist, World Championship golden medallist, Diamond League winners, and the champion performers of 2026 based connected the World Rankings qualification system.

It runs from September 11-13 successful Budapest and volition go a biennial diagnostic successful World Athletics’ calendar. The sport’s planetary governing assemblage chose 2026 to motorboat the lawsuit successful betwixt the World Championships, and, successful Olympic years, usage it to circular retired a highly competitory season.

Jamaican sprint fable Usain Bolt, an ambassador for the event, said it was “great to spot way and tract going successful a antithetic direction”.

“It’s going to beryllium large to spot the champion of the best,” the eight-time Olympic golden medallist said astatine a quality league connected Thursday earlier the event.

“This was 1 of my top things. I’ve ever lived to vie against the champion and I would thrive successful this moment.”

The erstwhile sprinter Usain Bolt, present 40, inactive holds the satellite grounds successful the men’s 100m and 200m [Bernadett Szabo/Reuters]

What is the Ultimate Championship prize pot?

The $10m prize cookware volition spot winners of each lawsuit container a grounds $150,000.

That’s much than treble the $70,000 fixed astatine past year’s World Championships successful Tokyo, and 3 times what was awarded by World Athletics to Olympic champions successful Paris. Second spot takes location $75,000, 3rd spot $40,000, each the mode to $2,000 for 16th-place finishers.

Relay teams volition divided $80,000 among themselves, followed by $40,000 and $24,000 for 2nd and 3rd place, respectively.

The Ultimate Champion besides walks distant with planetary “bragging rights”, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said earlier the lawsuit arsenic helium explained its value to the sport.

What’s caller astatine the Ultimate Championship?  

For one, determination are nary medals. It’s portion of World Athletics’ “reimagining of awards” that replaces the accepted accolade with a customised trophy for the Ultimate Champions based connected idiosyncratic tokens.

All events volition beryllium nonstop semifinals oregon finals alternatively than starting disconnected arsenic heats. Athletes competing successful the men’s and women’s 200m volition prime their preferred semifinal vigor and lane based connected their effect order.

A necktie for archetypal spot successful a vertical leap volition beryllium decided by a jump-off alternatively than beryllium shared, portion athletes successful throwing events volition person 4 attempts down from the emblematic six, that excessively successful the 8:8:6:4 model.

The mixed 4×100-metre relay volition diagnostic successful Budapest aft its debut astatine the World Relays earlier this year, with each quartet competing successful nationalist kits.

Why is Ultimate Championship getting disapproval from a fewer athletes?

A fig of events person been excluded from the Ultimate Championship, including changeable put, triple jump, women’s hammer throw, and discus throw, arsenic good arsenic long-distance way events similar 3,000-metre steeplechase and 10,000-metre.

World Athletics said its determination was based connected viewership and precedence for faster-paced events.

Olympic discus champion Matthew Denny and erstwhile satellite champion and two-time triple leap champion Pedro Pichardo were among the athletes who lamented the determination connected societal media.

Denny, existent satellite fig two, explained that the prize wealth “can alteration a vocation and a life” and implored World Athletics to reconsider its stance connected nationalist involvement driven by its ain statistics.

“Innovation should not travel astatine the disbursal of opportunity.”

World grounds watch

These athletes are already the creme de la creme successful their tract and are astir apt to acceptable a satellite record, based connected this year’s performance:

• Men’s Pole Vault: None different than Sweden’s Armand ‘Mondo’ Duplantis, who has breached the satellite grounds 15 times and astir precocious this March.
• Men’s 800m: World pb Emanuel Wanyonyi has repeatedly threatened chap Kenyan David Rudisha’s 1:40.91 acceptable astatine the London 2012 Olympics.
• Women’s 800m: Audrey Werro is caller disconnected her 1:53.70 acceptable connected location ungraded astatine the Zurich Diamond League successful August. The Swiss’s clip is 3rd all-time and dangerously adjacent to the 1:53.28 acceptable by Jarmila Kratochvilova successful 1983.
• Men’s 400m hurdles: Brazil’s Alison dos Santos precocious smashed the record successful Zurich, 5 years aft Norway’s Karsten Warholm clocked 45.94 astatine the Tokyo Olympics.
• Women’s 100m hurdles: Zurich magic extended to the women’s 100m hurdles arsenic USA’s Masai Russell stormed to a 12.09 to headdress disconnected 12 consecutive wins this season.