World’s best athletes left in the dark as career-threatening Diamond League overhaul looms

Hundreds of athletes dreaming of glory at next month’s World Athletics Championships may learn they will lose opportunities to continue competing as full-time professionals, and in stadia or on television, immediately after the showpiece in Qatar.

The IAAF governing body is restructuring its Diamond League circuit, which has run throughout the European summer every year for the past decade, to make it more “marketable”.

The first of two meets comprising the 2019 Diamond League Finals takes place in Zurich on 29 August, with the second Final in Brussels on 6 September. Winners in each event final collect US$50,000 along with a Diamond League trophy. Participating athletes have collected US$10,000 for each win they’ve secured during the Diamond League qualification meets this year, securing smaller prizes for lower placings down to US$1,000 for recording an eighth place finish.

America’s defending world triple jump champion Christian Taylor stands to become the most successful athlete in the history of the Diamond League if he wins his seventh title, but has told The Independent he fears it could be his last significant pay cheque.

The IAAF has confirmed that the men’s and women’s 5K events will be replaced by a 3K race next year but athletes have heard nothing on which other four events will be removed from the calendar, or when they will be informed, since a vague warning was issued through media briefings in March.

“I don’t know who’s making these decisions [or] how they are being made,” Taylor said. “I try to be as optimistic as possible. I just hope that, at the end of the fall, that when my season starts, I do have meetings to go to. We just try to make a living and hopefully they hear our voices, hear our cries and just listen to us.”

Despite being one of track and field’s biggest names, with only Jonathan Edwards ever having jumped further, Taylor says he has personal history of his governing body dropping career-impacting news on him in Qatar without warning or consultation.

“I came to Doha [for the first meet of the 2015 Diamond League] four years ago and they said ‘yeah, now you have four meetings’. That is how I found out. My agent did not tell me.”

Triple jump competitions have not featured at over half the Diamond League meeting this year, indicating they are among the events most at risk of being scrapped or held on city-centre road sides instead, as has been mooted.

“I need to be in the stadiums for sure. These elevated runways are very difficult to jump on. It’s not my preference. At the end of the day, this is my career, this is my life, so if that’s my only option I would do what I have to do. But of course, if I have the opportunity to compete in front of 50,000 people, why would I not want that?”

A spokesperson for the IAAF told The Independent: “Those events that will be included in the 2020 Diamond League broadcast will be selected at the end of the outdoor competition season, after the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Doha. However each Diamond League meeting will still have the opportunity to include other events in its programme, outside of the 90-minute international broadcast window.”

Events added to individual programmes but not classified as Diamond League events are ineligible for IAAF prize money.

Chief executive Jon Ridgeon, a former Olympic sprint hurdler with TeamGB, has co-chaired a ‘working group’ redesigning the format. “Bearing in mind that this year the Diamond League is 10 years old, it was the perfect time to take what was already a very good product but to make it better,” Ridgeon said earlier this year.

“There’s a renewed focus on innovation with the field events. We are going to be seeing more field events outside the stadium in a city centre environment and also within the stadium as well. We will be innovating so we can really bring some of the field events to life that sometimes are lost a little within the multi-ring circus of an athletics event.”

“I think all the stakeholders agreed that it was time for the next evolution,” Ridgeon added.

Jamaica’s Frederic Dacres is the reigning Diamond League champion in the men’s discus but also told The Independent he had not received any communication from the IAAF throughout the review process.

“I can’t say we’ve heard anything,” the Commonwealth Games champion said. “I’m in the dark as much as you guys for now. I don’t know what’s going to happen and hopefully we’re not going to get bumped.”

Dacres believes it could still be possible to compete professionally through entering “development meets” in Jamaica, Germany, Sweden and the US, but that the Diamond League was “the big field” for prize money.

TeamGB’s bronze-medal winning former javelin thrower Goldie Sayers believes her successors would “probably not” be able to compete as full-time professionals if they were to lose access to the Diamond League, in what will be an Olympic year.

“You need opportunities to compete and make a living, if that is your living,” Sayers said. “Javelin is one of the most iconic events in the Olympic Games and one of the oldest and so for me it would have to stay involved. It is one of the most beautiful events and I’d be very sad if it wasn’t in there and I know the competitors would be fairly devastated.”

“We need more competitions for athletes and kids have got to have something to aspire to achieve because you have to ‘see it’ to want to ‘be it’.”

The IAAF say they have listened to “what the market told them” and that events need to be streamlined to work for television, which is set to receive a reduced 90 minutes of coverage.

The changes may mean less exposure for para-athletes, who have featured in events such as London’s Anniversary Games in recent years. “Being part of the Diamond League is a really important opportunity for para-athletes,” said wheelchair racer Kare Adenegan, who won two medals for ParalympicsGB at the Rio Olympics. “There are great crowds, great tracks and just to get that publicity, it’s an event that I really enjoy doing.”

“It would be a shame if they took para-events out of the Diamond League because it helps people understand that sport is inclusive: there are so many sports and there really is something out there for everyone.”