Alkass Digital
The World Athletics Championships Budapest 23 concluded on Sunday after nine days of thrilling action in which superstars of the sport added to their legacy and new stars emerged as global champions.
A record total of 2100 athletes from 195 countries (plus the Athlete Refugee Team) have competed in the Hungarian capital, watched by more than 400,000 ticketed spectators from 120 countries, and producing one world record, one world U20 record, seven championship records, 11 area records and 73 national records.
The heightened competitiveness provided enormous drama in the field events in particular, where 13 athletes across eight events recorded their best mark in the final round of competition to improve their positions, five of them clinching the gold medal.
Meanwhile, US sprinters Noah Lyles and Sha’Carri Richardson, Kenyan middle distance diva Faith Kipyegon, Dutch 400m hurdles specialist Femke Bol and dominant Spanish walkers Alvaro Martin and Maria Perez emerged as multiple title winners.
Lyles claimed the 100m and 200m double and anchored the USA men’s 4x100m relay team to victory, while Richardson set a championship record of 10.65 to win her first global title in the 100m, then anchored the USA team to a second championship record in the women’s 4x100m relay.
Kipyegon clinched a historic double, becoming the first woman to win both the 1500m and 5000m at the World Athletics Championships after breaking the world records over both distances this year.
Martin (20km and 35km race walk) and Perez (20km and 35km race walk) completed the first gold medal sweep of the race walks programme by one country, Spain.
Bol completed a drama-filled nine days by anchoring the Dutch women’s 4x400m team to a last-gasp victory in the final event, having fallen within metres of the finish line in the 4x400m mixed relay on the first night and won her first individual world title in the 400m hurdles in between.
Venezuela’s Yulimar Rojas won her fourth world triple jump title, while Lyles (200m), Kipyegon (1500m), Joshua Cheptegei (10,000m), Grant Holloway (110m hurdles) and Karsten Warholm (400m hurdles) have each won three titles in their core event. With so many brilliant storylines, this will go down as the most engaging edition in the history of the sport.
After nearly one million website visitors a day in the first seven days, Budapest had already surpassed previous visitor numbers for a World Championships.
The popularity of the website’s live results platform continues to grow. On day one, traffic was more than double that for any previous event. At peak times, the website received over 400,000 requests per minute, and up to 14 million per hour.
Over the nine days of the championships, 14,000 news articles have been published for a reach of 28.5 billion.
A record number of more than 1200 accredited broadcast personnel from 46 broadcasters, as well as 850 accredited media and photographers from 75 countries, have covered the championships.
Rights-holding broadcasters report that huge audiences are tuning in from all over the world and there are impressive peak numbers in key markets such as Germany, UK, France and Finland. TBS in Japan reported after the first weekend that their coverage reached 28 million people at some point during the broadcast. These numbers are expected to grow as more data is collated.
World Athletics social media platforms passed the milestone of 11 million followers during the championships, and more than 38,000 people visited the Museum of World Athletics exhibition in the Etele Plaza in Budapest. (World Athletics)