By Iain Axon
MILAN, Feb 9 (Reuters) – Moving athletics into the first week of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics rather than their traditional second-week start could be a blessing in disguise for the sport, World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said.
LA organizers have broken with tradition to switch athletics and swimming, with the latter now in the second week at the SoFi stadium in Inglewood which will also host the opening ceremony along with the LA Memorial Coliseum.
The SoFi stadium will then require time to be turned into the swimming venue which means that athletics – the Games’ blue riband sport – will start at the Coliseum a day after the ceremony .
The Coliseum is the first venue in Olympic history to host three editions of the Games, after 1932 and 1984, and it will stage the women’s 100m final on the first day of athletics.
Coe told Reuters in an interview on Sunday that athletics would be instantly thrust into the spotlight and could benefit from what he expects to be a spectacular opening ceremony.
“It is a city I know well and I just have an instinct for it,” said Coe, who won his second Olympic gold medal over 1,500m at the LA Olympics in 1984. “You want to top the bill.
“My instinct is the L.A. organizing committee will deliver a great opening ceremony. It’s L.A. If they can’t do it, probably no one else is going to do it. And there’s a great opportunity for us to be the big start of the Games off the back of an opening ceremony.”
Going first, however, does pose challenges, with teething problems hitting most Games, including transportation, in the first few days. Coe said everything would need to be in place for athletics’ early start.
“So we do want to make sure that we’re not the guinea pig for the opening (few days), and track and field is complicated … We spoke to all, we spoke to the top 20 female sprinters and their coaches,” he said of the switch.
“We also spoke to the men, and the women were up for it. The vast majority of them said, ‘yeah, this is a really big opportunity for us’,” he said.
“So, you know, we will make sure that over the course of that day, really do make sure they’ve got all the services they need and the right transport arrangements.”
With the marathon still in its traditional slot at the end of the Games, Coe said athletics now had a chance for longer exposure instead of being confined to just the second week.
“There is the opportunity over the course of that two weeks … to actually get more content from track and field over the course of the 14-15 days than would have been possible had we all just gone in the last week.”
(Writing by Karolos Grohmann; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
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