At last week's Diamond League season opener in Doha, they unveiled the schedule for the 2019 World Championships, which will also be held in the Qatari capital. When they announced Doha as the host of the 2019 Worlds, it led to some immediate questions/doubts/worries about the heat.
They solved one of those problems by moving the Championships from their typical mid-summer timetable to late September/early October. The event schedule answered some of those other questions, while also creating a whole slew of others.
Doha 2019 has been praised for coming up with an "innovative" and "fan-friendly" schedule. It's definitely innovative. And I'm sure the athletes will appreciate being kept out of the heat as much as possible (although it's evidently still ridiculously hot, even at night, in the Middle East in late September). The schedule of all-nighttime events will definitely affect some training schedules, though. Especially in the marathon.
Marathoners are used to getting up at the crack of dawn and racing in the early morning. In Doha, the marathons (as well as the race walks) will be at midnight. For fans and spectators, the views will be spectacular. But for the athletes, it's definitely going to throw them completely out of whack to be finishing the race around 2:30 am. Even if it is for the heat, it's still going to screw them up. Especially since all of the other marathons will stay on their early-morning schedule. And, presumably, so will the Tokyo Olympics, which, because of the late World Championships, are only 10 months later.
The other athletes who I think will be impacted the most by Doha's schedule are the multi-eventers. Decathletes and heptathletes typically spend two entire days at the track, starting in an empty stadium early in the morning session (generally as the first event), continuing all afternoon, and concluding at some point during the evening session. Then turning around and doing it all again the next day.
In Doha, however, the multi-event competitions will all be condensed into a period of about seven hours. The first events will be at 4:30, and the final event of each day will be around midnight. That's great for the recovery between days. But it also means the break between events will be significantly shorter. And they won't get a midday break between sessions like they normally do.
One of the things they did at the exceptional World Championships last summer in London was limit the number of morning sessions, which they think helped attendance (morning sessions, which generally include only preliminary heats, typically feature far more empty seats than the evening sessions of mainly semifinals and finals). Doha has taken that a step further, eliminating morning sessions completely and replacing them with what they're calling "split" evening sessions that start in the late afternoon and have a one-hour break before the finals at night.
Likely a concession to the heat, I doubt this will be a permanent change (I hope it won't be). There's no chance they won't have morning sessions at the Tokyo Olympics or the 2021 Worlds in Eugene for one simple reason. Morning sessions mean more opportunities to sell tickets. And, while Tokyo's heat will also pose a problem (although not to the same extent as Doha), the weather in Oregon for the 2014 World Juniors was beautiful (when it wasn't raining).
Personally, I'd like to see a morning session only on the the four days when they're necessary for the multi-events. And you can limit them to the weekends, too. You have the heptathlon on Saturday and Sunday of the first weekend and the decathlon on Friday and Saturday of the second weekend. You could do the marathons and walks then, too (the 50k walks are simultaneous, and if hold both 20k walks back-to-back on the same day, it'd work).
Anyway, I've got a feeling that this is partially TV-motivated, too. One of the reasons there were afternoon finals in Rio was because that's prime time in Europe. Just like there will likely be morning finals in Tokyo so they can be during prime time in the U.S. (another reason why there will almost certainly be morning sessions at the 2020 Olympics). The time difference to Doha and the times at which events were scheduled puts them during the late afternoon/early evening in Europe and the early afternoon in the U.S. In other words, the perfect time for TV. Even the midnight marathons will start at 4:00 Eastern in the U.S. and prime time in Europe.
There's one last significant change in the schedule that's worth mentioning. The meet will close with the World Championships debut of the mixed 4x400 relay. The IOC added this event to the Olympics for the Tokyo Games, so the IAAF is following suit by adding it to the World Championships. It could provide for an exciting finish to the meet.
As a result, the men's and women's 4x400s have been moved to the opening weekend. I like that change. However, it also means that, counting heats and finals, an athlete that does all three events (the individual and both relays) would potentially have to run seven 400s in 10 days (without even accounting for the possibility of them doing the 200, as well).
Even the countries that are deep enough to not run their top 400 runners until the finals of the relays would still be asking the likes of LaShawn Merritt and Allyson Felix to run five times over the course of the Championships. And, with the regular 4x4's now before the individual 400s, I wonder if they'll choose not to run one or both of the relays. And, if they choose to sit a relay out, which one? Because I doubt the IAAF or IOC wants the mixed 4x4 to get the U.S. or Jamaican or British "B" team (most countries don't have that option to begin with). But that might be exactly what they end up getting.
Hopefully that won't be the case, though. Hopefully these changes all work out for the better and the Doha Worlds are just as glorious as the London Worlds. Regardless, I think this new schedule is a one-and-done thing. Eugene 2021 may not go all the way back to the old schedule, but it likely won't feature midnight marathons, either. One thing seems certain, though. The mixed 4x400 relay is probably going to be the finale moving forward. At both the World Championships and Olympics.
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