<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t really is quite the scene. Midnight in Tokyo, Usain Bolt is DJing and the launch party for the World Athletics Ultimate Championships is in full swing. And then the World Athletics chief executive, Jon Ridgeon, walks up to me and says: \u201cI read your recent Guardian column<\/a>, and\u00a0I thought it was very unfair.\u201d<\/p>\n Imagine Gary Lineker going in two-footed, having never picked up a yellow card in his career. This is the track and field equivalent. Ridgeon, a\u00a0former world silver medallist over the 110m\u00a0hurdles, is one of the smartest and most reasonable people in sport. He is saying, in a polite way,\u00a0that he is really rather annoyed.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not that Ridgeon wildly disagrees with my premise that athletics needs to do more to attract gen\u00a0Z and stay relevant. But he maintains my column is overly negative, skewed towards one side, and doesn\u2019t reflect how much World Athletics<\/a> has transformed the sport.<\/p>\n I enjoy a good debate. So we begin to tease out the arguments and find common ground. At one point Ridgeon graciously admits that some of his friends agree with me more than him. I respond by saying I should have acknowledged World Athletics\u2019 achievements, including the Athletics Integrity Unit to tackle doping.<\/p>\n But there is still plenty of meat on the bone when Usain pushes the bass to tinnitus-inducing levels and we have to push our discussion down the road. Last weekend, though, we finally got the chance to thrash things out. Think of it as Ridgeon v Ingle II: this time we can actually hear each other.<\/p>\n If I was writing for a 1980s tabloid, a snapper would probably have photographed him planting a boxing glove on my jaw. Instead, after some initial sparring, we get on to why the future is brighter than I suggested a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n First, though, Ridgeon wants to get something off his chest. \u201cIn your column you quoted a US-based coach and he implied that the sport was slightly asleep and in decline. But on any metric \u2013 global television audience, media audience, social media audience, income \u2013 it is growing.\u201d Warming to his theme, he says: \u201cOur income\u2019s grown by 25% in the last three or four years. Global cities ring me up to say we want your world championships. And\u00a0the biggest sporting event in the world in 2025 was\u00a0our event in Tokyo. I don\u2019t say this complacently, but it says growth, right?\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not finished. \u201cAnd we\u2019re not just\u00a0sitting passively back going: \u2018Gen Z is tough \u2013 let\u2019s rely on our middle-aged audience!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n But there is a glint in his eye when Ridgeon talks and explains that World\u00a0Athletics had 700 million video views on its social media channels at the world championships in September<\/a> \u2013 double that of Budapest two years ago.<\/p>\n It is impressive stuff. But my central argument is that, while athletics is certainly incredible at the Olympics and world championships, it needs to do more to attract casual fans the rest of the time.<\/p>\n Mondo Duplantis, for instance, can vault over a double\u2011decker bus with nearly 2 metres to spare. Sabastian Sawe, the London marathon winner<\/a>, can run 26.2\u00a0miles at an average pace of about 4min\u00a040sec a mile. Unless you are up close, it is impossible to envisage how impressive such feats are.<\/p>\n