Athletics needs a boost, and a Netflix documentary could be it

At a recent indoor meet in Clermont-Ferrand in France, Sweden’s Armand Duplantis leaped to another pole vault world record feat. A sixth in the 23-year-old’s already illustrious career, it was yet another demonstration of his history-making excellence and dominance in the discipline. But did you hear about it? Probably not.

Athletics is and always has been most strongly associated with the Olympic Games. Its stars are geared for the four-year Olympic cycle and its Gold, Silver and Bronze moments have captivated millions for decades. But given its current status, you’d be forgiven for thinking the world’s athletes go into hibernation between Games, to be defrosted only for use in leap years.

This is in stark contrast to the pre-saturation sports coverage era, where British stars such as Daley Thompson and Seb Coe were household names and international athletics regularly appeared on terrestrial television. The 2012 Olympics – and long build up to it – allowed heptathlete Jessica Ennis and long-distance runner Mo Farah most notably to build strong media profiles which they still enjoy to this day. But beyond that, the sport has declined in stature and frequently gets lost in the headlines.

It is perhaps not an athletics-only problem. All sports apart from football contend with the exposure problem in the UK. Even cricket, a far more established and by its nature ‘British’ sport, has jostled in recent years with the sustainability and future of its red-ball and particularly county game. Professional rugby union has also recently endured high-profile financial crises in two of its major clubs, Worcester Warriors and Wasps. But when a major Test series or the Ashes rolls round, or the Six Nations or Rugby World Cup is in town, you can guarantee people will be watching.

There are no doubt reams upon reams of sports executives queuing up outside Netflix or Prime HQs pleading for a documentary of their own

In its present state, track-and-field does not benefit from this luxury. Take the 2022 World Championships, for example. Whether it be Sydney McLaughlin’s seamless lunge to the 400m hurdles title, Noah Lyles’s blitzing 200 metres final or Shelly-Ann Frazer Pryce’s sub-10.70 100-metre gold, there are stories and characters galore. Records are being broken and expectations shattered. But the sport seems unable to find a space to air them.

The trouble any sport has is maintaining its profile all year around. This is particularly acute with regards to athletics in the USA, where finding even the slightest hint of a column inch when you have NFL, NHL, NBA and everything else to contend with is a struggle. But it is a more universal problem in the sport too. You may not be able to convince sports fans to be as enticed by the indoor season of the early months as they may be by an Olympic Games, World or European Championships. But as the golf documentary ‘Full Swing’ has demonstrated, there never seems to be a bad time of the year to put your leading stars on screen. Granted, athletics is not currently enjoying or enduring a major split in its professional ranks, enough to invite any camera crew. But the gold-dust content is there and waiting to be exposed.

It would be simplistic and, I’d argue, lazy to suggest the only problem athletics faces is the Usain Bolt-shaped hole in its ranks. Granted, Bolt was a star of enormous proportions, lauded and followed wherever he went. But if the sport were examined closely, most would see that there are major commercial stars there to be capitalised on.

Take Noah Lyles, the young and fiery American who followed up Tokyo bronze with gold in Oregon at the Worlds last summer and is far from lacking confidence. Or McLaughlin, whose winning race at the 400m hurdles was so good she had pundits questioning whether she may well be able to conquer the flat too. And even if you don’t include the slightly older Jamaicans Shelly-Ann Frazer-Pryce and Elaine Thompson-Herah, two of the greatest sprinters of all time, there is the broader international interest of India’s Neeraj Chopra and Sweden’s Armand Duplantis. And British audiences would not be missing out either, with the 800 metres’s Keely Hodgkinson and recent World gold medallist Jake Wightman likely candidates for big-time exposure.

There are no doubt reams upon reams of sports executives queuing up outside Netflix or Prime HQs pleading for a documentary of their own. Many may get there first yet. But while Formula 1’s Drive to Survive may have acted as somewhat of a catalyst, a number are bound to follow. And athletics is the perfect subject (or victim). So what are you waiting for, TV bosses?