Sonia O’Sullivan: Indoor running a vintage form of entertainment

It always seems a strange contradiction to watch athletes training outdoors somewhere in the warm sunshine, all trying to escape the inclement winter weather in the northern hemisphere, yet so many planning to return there to race indoors over the coming weeks.

For most it’s all about building up to the World Indoor Championships, which will take place in Belgrade, Serbia, in mid-March, just over seven weeks away.

There are actually three World indoor Championships mapped out over the next three years, all squeezed in after being already assigned, postponed and overlapping, with the already scheduled World Indoors in China next year, and then Glasgow in 2024.

This alongside the already twice-postponed World Cross-Country Championships in Australia, next year, as well as the European Indoors planned for Istanbul in 2022, making for some big early season racing over the next few years.

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It always makes me wonder too about indoor running, the origins, the relevance, and where it’s all headed.

So where and why did it all begin? It appears the first indoor athletics events were held in London in the 1860s, a form of indoor entertainment in the wintertime, the concept then taking off to a far greater extent in the US, where indoor meetings were staged something like a Broadway Show.

It would be 98 years before, in 2012, the traditional long-running event was moved to the Armory track

It often made for an exhilarating night out, where the starters and officials came dressed in tuxedos to add to the allure of an indoor athletics meeting, especially in New York City.

Madison Square Garden – the original and then rebuilt one – became the most famous venue of the lot, only with limited space each February, the Millrose Games staged on a 160-yard track (146.3m), which made for 11 laps to the mile on a wooden track.

It would be 98 years before, in 2012, the traditional long-running event was moved to the Armory track, a more functional venue uptown Manhattan, leaving behind show-time New York style and focussing more on a functional, high performance track more suited to modern athletes.

That's not to say athletes didn't perform at a high level on the steeply banked and hard slippery-wooden Millrose track: Eamonn Coghlan, the original chairman of the boards, won the famed Wanamaker Mile seven times; Marcus O'Sullivan won five times, including 11 sub-four minute miles at Millrose; with Ronnie Delaney a four-time time winner; Niall Bruton winning twice; and Mark Carroll also victorious in 2000.

The Irish connection continues on Saturday with the new format now held at the Armory, the event director being Ray Flynn, still the Irish record holder for the mile and the 1,500m. Andrew Corcoran will return to the headline mile event, with Mark English in the 800m, Luke McCann in the men's invitational mile. Eric Favours, who last weekend broke his own Irish record, also goes in the shot out.

I can remember being at Madison Square Garden when the lights would go down just before 10pm, as the athletes were introduced one by one under the spotlight for the much anticipated Wanamaker mile.

The Millrose Games of 2022 haven’t lost that appeal, and it is still the favourite coming out party for many US athletes who have been scattered around the country in the sunshine, or at altitude, working hard through the winter months.

There's a lot of pride on the line, also a lot of athletes focussed on fast times and records

For most of them this will be a first race since the Tokyo Olympics. There is not much hiding or secret training these days, with so much revealed on social media, but there is nothing like a race to test the water and see where you are at.

There’s a lot of pride on the line, also a lot of athletes focussed on fast times and records. This is the mindset for many athletes now as they have realised with the more gradually banked sprung tracks, sprung shoes and perfect conditions, there is no better place to run fast and get qualifying marks for the outdoor World Championships to be held in Eugene, Oregon, in July this year.

There was a time when indoor running was considered slower. It still is for some events like the 800m and below, but for the 1,500m, mile, 3,000m and 5,000m, there are opportunities when the pace is on for some athletes to run faster indoors that they ever will outdoors.

It’s also much more spectator friendly indoors, especially now as restrictions are lifting and fans are allowed back indoors again. The seats are a lot closer to the action and with the 200m track you get to see the athletes pass by the finish line twice as often and twice as quick.

The original Millrose Games were pure entertainment, as you would expect in New York City, midtown between 7th and 8th Avenue, and as a college student going there in the late 1980s it was one of the highlights of the year, a track meet like no other.

I haven’t been back to the Millrose Games since I last saw Marcus O’Sullivan ripping up the boards in the 1990s, and excited to get a feel for indoor athletics again, to get close to the action and appreciate an iconic event in a new location,

The 200m banked track giving a snapshot of pure athletics, almost as if you’re racing there yourself.