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Major Meets Need Major Stadia
November 17, 2008
(James Fields editorial comment)

1600 of the best teenage athletes from Australia, China, Oceania and East Asia will compete 14-18 January 2009 in the Australian Youth Olympic Festival at Sydney, Australia. The steeplechase distance is 2000 meters.

The International Olympic Committee has approved a "Youth Olympic Games" and last February awarded the first summer version to Singapore for August 14-26, 2010.

These meets and IAAF competitions such as the World Championships, including youth and junior versions, are part of a global growth industry in promotion of track and field athletics. That growth needs physically attractive venues with a big airport, lots of hotels, good public transportation, and a stadium with many seats around a quality track.

How many seats? So far, the two World Championships including women's steeple were at Helsinki with 42,062 seats and Osaka with 50,000. Many nations have similar resources.

USA has only two with about that many seats and a quality track: at the University of Kansas in Lawrence – and at the University of Washington in Seattle, a beautiful city with the other needed amenities for thousands of tourist fans.

Most other USA tracks, including Olympic venues in Atlanta and Los Angeles, have been eliminated to increase seating for football. If last-chance Seattle makes that mistake, the USA may never host a World Championship or Youth Olympic Games.

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