the official anthem for the championship<\/a>, Gold, which he has written and performed.<\/p>\n“It’s super exciting. I think it was time to try something new and innovate within athletics,” Duplantis said.<\/p>\n
“It’s tough for athletes when we have years without a championship. I think this fills the gap perfectly, you want to have some sort of climax to build towards.”<\/p>\n
Kerr, set for a first race against rival Ingebrigtsen for two years, said the substantial increase in prize money showed how “serious” World Athletics are about the event. <\/p>\n
However, while the 2023 world champion agrees that a global championship was needed, he accepts there is “probably going to be some confusion from the outside world about what this is”.<\/p>\n
“If that’s what they’re willing to put forward in prize money, it means that they’re willing to put that effort into marketing and media,” said Kerr.<\/p>\n
“We’re seeing progress. Obviously, $150,000 is a lot of money. It’s not as much as other big sports, but they’ve earned that through years of pushing their marketing.”<\/p>\n
But not everyone is convinced.<\/p>\n
Hurdles star Karsten Warholm has voiced his concern regarding the impact on the calendar, describing this year’s late-season schedule as “chaos”.<\/p>\n
“I think the Diamond League is a fantastic concept that should be cultivated. It will take a long time before people understand what an Ultimate Champion is,” Warholm told Norwegian media outlet VG.<\/p>\n
“It’s pretty much the same athletes who participate but there could be two different winners at the Diamond League final and the Ultimate Championship.<\/p>\n
“In terms of storytelling, it’s going to be difficult. I don’t think even athletics people are keeping up.”<\/p>\n
There is also the matter of the excluded athletes and events.<\/p>\n
World triple jump champion Pedro Pichardo responded on social media to the decision to exclude his discipline: “I really don’t understand what your problem is, and even less so making this decision without any explanation.<\/p>\n
“This isn’t track and field and it’s not good for our sport.”<\/p>\n
After ending her season with victory in the Diamond League Final, world shot put champion Chase Jackson told Citius Mag: “My body is saying ‘yes’ but my pockets are saying ‘why the hell am I not at the Ultimate?’ <\/p>\n
“How [do] you have track and field and just skip events? How does that make any sense?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of the sport’s biggest names have voiced their support for athletics’ new global event. Pole vault world…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-621239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=621239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}