Sonia O’Sullivan: Nitro Athletics Series could be set to catch on

I left Australia on Tuesday, still buzzing off the excitement from inside the Albert Park athletics stadium in Melbourne at the weekend, with the first round of the Nitro Athletics Series.

Just over 7,000 fans packed the stadium to near capacity to kick start an entirely new style of athletics meeting, designed to shake-up a lot of the traditional athletic values and entertainment level, and more importantly reconnect the fans to the athletes. And vice versa.

It was great to see so many young children racing to the track side to greet the athletes after each event, seeking autographs and ‘selfies’. It certainly felt everyone wanted to be a part of the action.

Then I arrived in London on Wednesday, and read the news that Genzebe Dibaba from Ethiopia had run a new world indoor record over 2,000m, at a meeting in the Spanish city of Sabadell. Her 5:23.75 knocked almost seven seconds off the previous world indoor best, set by Gabriela Szabo of Romania in 1998.

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It also, technically, bettered the world outdoor record of 5:25.36, which I ran in Edinburgh back in 1994. If ratified, it will be a world indoor best, and Dibaba will no doubt have her eye on my now 23-year-old world record once the outdoor season gets underway.

It has also raised some eyebrows, mainly because Sabadell is the same town Dibaba’s then coach, Jama Aden from Somalia, was last summer arrested in by Spanish police on suspicion of possessing banned performance enhancing drugs, including EPO.

Athletics continues to struggle to rise above the negative publicity involving doping and corruption, needs something more credible, and there were plenty of elements to the Nitro Athletics Series that appeared to do exactly that, or at least present something different.

It’s essentially a team-based competition, helped along on the night by the presence of Usain Bolt, who captained his All Stars team to take on teams from Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan and England.

First event

While most of the world’s athletes are wintering on the roads, cross country and indoor running tracks, the athletics season is in full flow in Australia. I had my apprehensions about how this would all work, although athletes based in the Southern Hemisphere are certainly more prepared than most for competing on the track in February.

But when you shake things up a little and build the event around competing rather than chasing fast times, then the crowd gets involved, you’ve created something that just might take off.

The first event was a mixed relay (200m, 400m, 600m, 800m). Australia won by a long way, and the Bolt All Stars trailed in last. Then, Bolt was out on the track, cheering his team on, and within a few events his prediction was looking good. “We’re here to win,” he said, and so began an evening of great entertainment, bolts of fire at the end of every race, interviews with the athletes as they completed their events.

It’s also a family-friendly event, partly based on the success of the cricket Big Bash league. It helped that the Australian team were never far from the lead, and the variety of races made things more exciting than a normal track meet.

There was the ‘three-minute distance challenge’, where the women ran for three minutes, then the men took over where the women finished for their three minutes: you wondered how this would play out, but it made sense, became a purely tactical affair, with a hard run for home with less than a minute to run.

There was also an ‘elimination mile’, with no pacing or finding your rhythm, just working out how to deal with the lactic acid building up after a hard 150m sprint at the completion of each lap. This was won by 19 year-old Australian Matthew Ramsden, the only problem being he was running for the Bolt All Stars. Australia had given away their trump card.

It could so easily have been the Usain Bolt show, although it was so much more than that, and I think many came away with much more than they expected. The biggest achievement after the opening night is the connection it made with the younger audience. There was real energy about the place, and you got the feeling that every athlete that got to experience this new style athletics went home thinking ‘I want to do that when I grow up’.

Traditional sports

It was all about fun and enjoyment, and reminded me of the simple things that you say when you go to visit a school and share your love for sport. You do it because you love it, and you are good at it because you work hard and you enjoy it.

There was no hiding the enjoyment on the field and around the track, and showed competition in its purest form, athletes doing everything they can to deliver the best result themselves and also their team-mates.

At the end of the night, the Bolt All stars were ahead by 30 points from Australia. With two more rounds to go – tonight and on Saturday – I can only imagine how the tactics will come in to play to deliver a winning team.

Athletics is one of those traditional sports that doesn’t like to rock the boat too much, but Nitro athletics has already shown that sometimes change can be a good thing. And I’m sorry that I won’t be there for the grand finale on Saturday evening.

Instead, I’ve come back to Dublin for the EGM of the Olympic Council of Ireland (OCI). I was reminded last week that, based on recent election results, every single vote will and can count.

I’m not running for re-election, having already made that intention clear, but as an outgoing executive member, I still have an important vote in the election for the future of all Olympic sports in Ireland. It’s the first time in almost 30 years that the opportunity for real change presents itself and that makes it a significant night on many levels.

While I was waiting for the action to begin last weekend, I thought to myself with such an array of athletes, why not just have a regular track meeting? Why change?

After three races, I could see the value in taking a chance and going with something different, the interaction between the athletes and the fans, the energy and the passion on show, all fresh evidence of what athletics can and should be all about.

We didn’t always know how far or how fast, how far or how high, the athletes were going. But we knew they all wanted to win, and every athlete was a star in the eyes of the kids who raced along the perimeter of the track. You couldn’t help but realise this is what inspires the future.

Change is what drives sport, and we simply cannot continue to hang on to old traditions if we want to connect and engage with the next generation.