The IAAF president knows the next four years could make or break the sport as interest declines despite the presence of stars such as Mondo Duplantis, Noah Lyles and Dina Asher-Smith
Here is a challenge for anyone with 53 seconds to spare – Google “6.05m slow motion pole vault”. Then try to stop your jaw hitting the floor as the Swedish teenage athlete Mondo Duplantis soars skyward, jackknifes his body, dances his hands up the pole, and flips – just! – over a height greater than a double decker bus. The new super slow-motion footage of his feat at the 2018 European championships in Berlin has been seen 4.5 million times on Twitter in the three weeks alone. The twist in the tail for athletics is that many viewers haven’t the foggiest who Duplantis is.
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Written by Sean Ingle
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/sep/23/athletics-sebastian-coe-mondo-duplantis-iaaf under the title “Make athletics great again: how does Coe ensure casual fans become converts? | Sean Ingle”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
