GLASGOW, SCOTLAND, March 01-03 — After the paltry haul of just 3 gold medals in Belgrade two years ago — and being topped by Ethiopia, a country that doesn’t even have an indoor track — the U.S. doubled its tally of titles here with 6 victories.
Christian Coleman, Bryce Hoppel, Grant Holloway, Ryan Crouser, Tara Davis-Woodhall and Elle St. Pierre all triumphed and picked up a $40,000 1st-place check.
The sextet included winners who fulfilled their role as favorites in the shape of Holloway, Crouser and Davis-Woodhall; a former champion coming back to the fore (stand up Mr. Coleman) and two middle distance upsets with sensational finishes from Hoppel and St. Pierre.
Translating indoor form to outdoors is not always an exact science but these six, and many others on the U.S. team, will have gotten a big confidence boost with the ’24 OG on the horizon.
The biggest international headlines deservedly went to the Netherlands’ Femke Bol and the Bahamas’ Devynne Charlton who got 400 and 60H World Records on the super-quick track, in both cases going into new territory for their events for the second time in just a matter of weeks.
Matching Bol and Charlton in terms of the decibels generated was ’23 WC 1500 winner Josh Kerr’s magisterial 3000 triumph on the second night as he hails from the Scottish capital Edinburgh less than 50M away — but, don’t forget is based in Seattle, guided by U.S. coach Danny Mackey.
Let the numbers tell the story of why the ’24 WIC was a success, at least on the track: WRs — 2; meet records — 5; world leads — 14 (so more than half the 26 events); Continental Records — 10.
Yes, it was a good champs, indeed it verged on the excellent in almost every respect although one quibble would be the late scheduling of the evening session and the medal ceremonies taking place as the stadium emptied with people trying to get home in good time.
However, one of the aspects that made everything sing, and despite the Emirates Arena being situated in an area of Glasgow that had overtones of a post-apocalyptic wasteland, were the near-capacity crowds.
Building on the success of the ’19 Euro Indoors at the same venue, the organizers managed to generate an intimate yet exuberant atmosphere with some superb stage management.
Around 4200 seats were available to the paying public for each session and World Athletics claimed 22,000 tickets had been sold, which looked about right as there was hardly a space in the stands for the three evening sessions.
Looking ahead 12 months, for just the second time there will be back-to-back WICs, with the Chinese city of Nanjing finally staging the twice-postponed meet in ’25 owing to pandemic-related issues.
It will be the first World Indoor in China and the first in the East Asia region since the Maebashi, Japan, edition in ’99 and it will be interesting to see whether the event will be able to match the excitement and fervor that was on display in Glasgow.
China disappointingly only brought a small team of 7 athletes to these championships and they didn’t get a single medal either here or in ’22.
WA President Sebastian Coe justified the awarding of the ’27 outdoor World Championships to Beijing just a few days before the start of Glasgow primarily on economic grounds and Nanjing will be under the microscope to try to assess how much genuine public interest in track there is in a country of 1.4 billion people, and how it has evolved since the ’15 outdoor Worlds.
Our event coverage is presented in four composite articles: men’s track, men’s field, women’s track, women’s field. ◻︎