What The Hell is Nitro Athletics?
Beginning on February 4 and consisting of two other competition days across a little over a week in Melbourne, Australia is the inaugural Nitro Athletics meet, a team-based track & field competition that’s being called the Twenty20 of athletics. Usain Bolt is gonna be there, apparently. But… huh, what? What does all that even mean?
“Nitro Athletics Melbourne combines strength, endurance, power and extreme energy to a new team-based competition, set to revolutionise track and field.”
Okay, let’s get this figured out. There are six teams that will compete: five national based squads (Australia, New Zealand, China, England and Japan) as well as the ‘Bolt All-Stars’, which naturally includes Monsiour Bolt himself as well as the entire rest of the world (except… there are four Aussies in his team). No American team (although there’s US representation on the All-Stars). It’ll be fun to see them blocked from other people’s countries for once, rather than the opposite way around.
Each team is comprised of 24 athletes: 12 men and 12 women with a team captain named from amongst them. You don’t compete for yourself but for your country, with points awarded for placings and those points going towards the team’s overall total. The points get weird as there are power plays where the captain nominates one event that’ll count for double plus there’s a steal thingy where you can rob another team of 50% of their points (dibs on Usain Bolt’s event) plus, fairly enough, you lose points for false starts. One more thing, in the long jump there’s a ‘turbo charge’ where you nominate a particular jump which you’ll get some kind of bonus for if you clear a designated distance. And a bonus zone in the javelin.
Already this is pretty confusing but it’ll probably make more sense in action. Equally as confusing is the event list, which doesn’t strictly limit itself to Olympic regulars either. There are 150m sprints and 3 minute runs. A hurdle relay, a mixed relay. They include para-events too which is cool because NZ’s para team were bloody outstanding at the Olympics last year. No shot put though, the bastards. Strength isn’t one of the event categories listed.
The whole thing is gonna be broadcast on Channel Seven in Australia, IMG have bought the global media rights. Also, Lord Sebastian Coe has gotten lippy about it, lending his considerable voce of approval:
LSC: “Athletics is a global sport with a global following, but we need events that bring back the fun, the kids and the crowds and we need to create events that deliver that and add a different dimension to therecord setting events like the World Championship. Why not change the format of how athletics is presented? We need brave, bold ideas that engage fans in events and across a range of platforms. The only thing stopping us is our imagination and the courage to try something new.”
That’s all well and good now but does the world really need another gimmicky sporting event? Is anyone even going to care? Why haven’t we heard more about this already?
Yeah, not sure. Probably because it’s hard not to see this kind of thing in the same light as certain other streamlined and hyped up versions of other sports. It’s the Twenty20 thing again. It’s true that athletics could use some kind of shot in the arm, years of doping dramas have had an eroding effect and while there are a few Usain Bolt types out there, it’s gotta be fair to say that the very best athletes are not pursuing careers in athletics. Most of them are being scouted by football academies or basketball programmes or other team sports. Individual sports don’t have the same glamour and they don’t have the same money. Every four years the Olympics make superstars of the fastest, strongest and most enduring of us for a month… and then they’re back on their own again.
Athletics already has a World Championship though. Plus there’s the yearly Diamond League series and Commonwealth and Continental Games out there as well. It’s not like there’s a lack of competition out there. So… what’s the gap in the market that Nitro Athletics is trying to fill then?
Dunno. Granted, there are a few exciting things in there. Like an elimination mile race which sounds kinda awesome, where the slowest runners are kicked out each time they hit a particular lap. Some of the other events combine male and female competitors in a unique way as well, the mixed relay for example. Every event is undertaken by both men and women, all counting towards the points total. Add in the para stuff and there’s a pleasantly level playing field, what with it all counting towards the same team cause. Although… all Olympic events are worth exactly one gold medal each, regardless of gender or prestige, so not such an innovation really. Gender equality is a big issue in sports but track and field is arguably one of the better ones.
The real problem there and the real problem with athletics is the same: coverage. It’s not about whether women are better athletes, that’s a self-defeating argument, the problem is that they don’t get exposure. That means less fame, less interest and much less cash. That then means even less coverage and the vicious circle perpetuates.
Athletics Australia chief executive Phil Jones: “Outside the coverage of the Olympic Games and sometimes the World Championships, we have struggled in Australia to get any significant media interest in covering conventional athletics competitions. Channel 7 was not alone in declining to cover our National Championships/Olympic Trials. Nobody wanted it. This caused us to rethink our strategy. Australia is a very competitive market when it comes to sports coverage. There are too many sports vying for a very small market. Over the years, many sports have changed their offering to make it more entertaining, especially targeting younger audiences.”
Ah for Christ’s sake. It’s always young people’s fault, ain’t it? Young people are fickle, young people are too busy on the instaweb to pay attention to a whole day of sports, young people are stupid and offensive and always committing crimes. Nah mate, they’re just an easy scapegoat for old people still trying to peddle the same off-brand time-pieces they’ve been shilling for forty years without updating the approach. Pretty sure the kids adore Usain Bolt, go to any primary school in 2008, 2012 or 2016 and you’d have seen someone whipping up that iconic pointed celebration pose. If you grew up with that, then the athletic buzz is already there. Bolt’s one of the most vibrant sporting personalities we’ve seen since Muhammad Ali – if you can’t build hype on the back of that then you’re doing your job wrong.
Speaking of, Usain is clearly the main man here, the bloke who’ll sell the tickets, and he’s got some pretty similar ideas about the state of things:
Usain Bolt: “I’m really excited about this. This is something different. The most exciting part for me was competing with my team-mates. Any team I compete in for the 4x100, I am always excited. This is going to be a team, for me it going to be brilliant. It’s going to be a big step and I think it’s going to draw more people towards track and field, and hopefully a lot more sponsors.”
Compete as a team, attract more viewers, attract more sponsors. The actual most important thing is that they’ve gotten a new broadcaster and it’s no coincidence that Channel Seven has had a lot to do with the organising of this Nitro Athletic extravaganza. By the way, Bolt has a financial stake in the concept just in case you were wondering how they managed to get him involved.
Telly broadcast rights have been sold around the world, including to New Zealand, and apparently they’ve already hit their sponsorship targets with ticket sales going pretty well too. Of course they are, people wanna see Usain Bolt. The trick is how well it’ll do in its second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. incarnations. Either the format lives on its own or it doesn’t, ya know. The measure of that is how well it goes as a sport and not just a gimmick. There’ll be international VIPs from all over in attendance, IAAF included, so if it does thrive then there’s talk of a global series.
By the way, the Twenty20 thing. Every damn week there’s a new theorem about how Test cricket can adapt to survive in the post-T20 world. Wait… wasn’t T20 supposed to bring the fans in and save the sport? As it happens, it probably has. Cricket wasn’t gonna die but now that there are these T20 leagues all over the place there’s so much money in the sport that guys can play a month or two a year of T20 in India or wherever and that then funds the rest of the year so they can get busy with the five-dayers. T20 gets bigger crowds and telly ratings but the fans who come in purely for the T20 spectacle are not the die-hards, they’re not the ones you want to be adjusting the rest of the schedule around. It’s misinterpreting that idea that gives people (even in the ICC) the wrong idea about the direction of Test cricket. Test cricket will always be the pinnacle.
Same here. Nitro Athletics definitely plays the hype up like T20 cricket but in the same way it’ll never overtake the glory of an Olympic medal. Still, so long as everyone stays in their own lane then there’s potential here.
If they’re trying to make a quick buck on this, it sounds like they’re going alright. If they’re trying to bring some valuable exposure to some quality athletes, then same deal. If they’re trying to ‘reinvigorate’ the sport then that’s a little bit of a different ask. You need the best in the business and you need them competing hard. You need more than six teams. But look, you’ve gotta start somewhere.
There are some damn fine athletes signed up too. Most of them in Usain Bolt’s team, which includes folks such as Asafa Powell, Dawn Harper-Nelson and Kerron Clement. Australia too, they’ve got several Olympians in tow, stars like Ryan Gregson, Michelle Jenneke and Scott Reardon. England are sending Christine Ohuruogu, who has medalled at three different Olympics including a gold in 2008 at the 400m. Mostly though, the athletes are gonna be youngsters. Rising stars and prospects.
And the New Zealand team? Hard to say, really. Nobody seems to have bothered announcing it yet, although the Nitro Athletics website claims that Anna Grimaldi will partake, which is great because she’s awesome. Also kiwi 3000m champ Laura Nagel and javelin thrower Tori Peeters have confirmed their own involvement. Don’t know what else but late last year Athletics NZ were advertising for competitors, so maybe don’t expect Nick Willis or Eliza McCartney.
It should be fun, if nothing else, even if the Aussie team are gonna destroy us. Just keep reminding yourself that New Zealand took more athletics medals at Rio 2016 than Australia did. For now that’s still the peak - even if most people won’t watch another pole vaulting comp until the next Commonwealth Games.