Oregon Gov. Kate Brown receives the ceremonial baton from IAAF President Sebastian Coe on the final day of the 2019 world championships as Sheikh Joaan bin Hamad Al Thani, president of the Qatar Olympic Committee, looks on. Photo by Getty Images for IAAF
DOHA, Qatar – The city of Eugene and Hayward Field have hosted many of the world’s top track and field events, including the U.S. Olympic trials (six times, with a seventh coming in 2020), the NCAA championships (15 times, and it’s returning in 2021) and the Prefontaine Classic (annually since 1975).
Now it’s time to get ready for the biggest event of all: the 2021 IAAF World Outdoor Track and Field Championships, which will be held August 6-15, 2021, at the new Hayward Field. It will be the first time the world outdoors have been held in the United States since the meet was started in 1983.
“I just think having Oregon on the international stage under this level of microscope is going to be amazing,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said during a “No Place Like Home” reception on Day Eight of the 2019 world championships. “I think it will help sort of put Oregon on the international stage permanently.”
To accommodate such a high-caliber event, Hayward Field was torn down in 2018 and is being rebuilt with 30,000 seats and a state of the art warm-up facility below the track, among other amenities.
Eugene, with a population of about 166,000, is much smaller than most cities that have hosted the world championships. Doha, for example, has a population of about 1.8 million, and the two previous world championship prior to Doha were in London and Beijing.
Brown is confident that the city can handle it and that it will benefit from hosting the event.
“Eugene is growing up, right?” she said. “It’s turning from what I would consider a town into a city. I think it’s these types of projects that catalyze economic growth way into the future.”
Brown was secretary of state when Eugene was bidding for the 2019 worlds, and she attended the IAAF meeting in place of then-Gov. John Kitzhaber, helping to make the case for the city. But Eugene lost to Doha, a decision that has prompted investigations into bribery and corruption.
But then, in a surprise decision five months later that has also drawn scrutiny, Eugene was awarded the 2021 event without an additional bidding process. Officials involved in the bid have repeatedly said that the process was above board, and they’ve noted that the 2007 world championships were awarded to Osaka, Japan, without an additional bidding process.
“I think we had a really compelling story that the heart of track and field in the United States is Eugene, is Oregon,” Brown said. “I think they know we will have fans galore both inside and outside of Hayward Field. I think the beauty and bounty of Oregon is an incredible opportunity.”
Brown recently toured the London Olympic Stadium, which has been turned into an innovation research and development center. While Hayward Field will remain a track, Brown believes that the event could push the city to expand into similar fields.
Additionally, Brown hopes that tourists will go outside Eugene to give themselves a “true Oregon experience.” She wants to encourage track fans to explore some of Oregon’s beauty by visiting Crater Lake, wine country, and the coast and desert areas.
“To be able to sit in Hayward Stadium where every seat has an amazing view, I think it’s just going to be an extraordinary experience,” she said. “I hope people just don’t stop at Hayward Field and go beyond.”
