European Athletics Championships

[JustGiveMeReason]

Is anyone else watching ?

I don't follow the Diamond League but do enjoy watching the European / World Championships and Olympic and Commonwealth Games Athletics.

Great to see so many of our athletes performing so well. Shame they got the ticketing and marketing so badly wrong.

Can anyone explain why
a) Some of the German team seem to be wearing Australia colours
b) Why we don't have a team kit ?

I get the different styles - some want to wear shorts and a t-shirt, some a vest, some run in their underwear or a swimming costume - their choice and whatever makes them comfortable but what I don't understand is why all the GB&NI team aren't in the same colours ?
I've just been watching this morning's coverage and some of our athletes are in blue, some are wearing purple, and Jake Wightman is wearing a white vest with blue shorts.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner

Extra trains would obviously be for big events, not the normal timetable, or even just extra carriages on the normal

I think you'll find there is a heck of a lot going on the stadium, far from a white elephant

https://www.alexander-stadium.co.uk/?utm_source=google_business_profile&utm_medium=organic

Yes the diamond league was at West Ham

We went on Saturday night and to be honest wish we'd stayed at home. £50 a ticket but we couldn't hear the PA, and the screens were too far away and too small to read so we weren't even sure who'd won what. We were right by the javelin but there was no info about how far they had thrown on the nearby timing board.

We waited 2.5 hours to get out because of the security incident with no staff around and no information about what was happening and how long we'd be there. Missed the last train, but no staff at the bus drop off point to help.

@Aphrodite89

Can we not just celebrate the achievements of our athletes. Being the best in Europe is a great achievement. I'm sure Amy Hunt is well aware of the world competition. She is only 24, pretty sure she has a plan.

I always find it useful to have the live scores open while you’re there, I was there Saturdays and Sunday and the app shows you who is throwing/ jumping next and updates the scores in real time. Makes it much easier to watch in person.

I think Amy would make world finals in the 100 and 200 right now (remember she currently is world silver medalist). In a strong championship field she’ll go faster.

It was a response to the point about the medal count not being fair on Keely or Georgia and simply saying that the strength of opposition will always be a factor in a European level competition. The 5 fastest 800m runners in the world this year are all European and 2 of the top 6 in the 1500m are, whereas none of the top 10 in the 100m or top 20 in the 200m are European. Those are just facts and it's not trashing Amy Hunt to point that out.

Think she'd need a personal best in both events and it might come down to how the semi-final draws went. The 200 in particular has really moved on this year. In 2025 Alfred didn't run it at the Worlds, Gabby Thomas was injured and Shericka Jackson was half fit at best. Now Alfred has run 21.51, Thomas is healthy, Jackson is getting towards healthy, Adaejah Hodge has emerged, Jefferson-Wooden looks as good as ever etc. It's a significantly tougher proposition now.

The medals at the finish line reminded me of sports day at primary where they gave stickers to the top three!

Yes ! This 100%

@NerrSnerr Was this stadium used for the Commonwealth games? It sounds a bit thrown up. It is a problem with the distances involved - in football stadiums you get the big screens coming down from the roof in the “corners” of a bowl of seats. I do think you have to throw money at an athletics stadium and this one isn’t right for ticket holders.

Yes, it’s the Alex which was used for the Commonwealth’s and is currently used for British champs every year. They’ve put a bid for London Worlds (2029 I think?) but that’ll be at West Ham.

I watch a lot of athletics so don’t mind the screens being poor, I keep track online but understand that’s not for everyone.

I really enjoyed watching it, some real world class athletes in attendance.

I do love the inclusion of the mixed relays but would prefer it more if they did the same as swimming in that they can choose the order of athletes. It makes it far more exciting as at times you can’t tell who is ahead, particularly if some teams have the women first and others have the men first.

Absolutely loved watching it!

i think Andrew Cotter is an excellent commentator ( and I didn’t mind Steve Cram/ Paula R.) Jenny Meadows popped up a lot, and was interesting.

had some friends who went and had an amazing time and I was so jealous ( I don’t live in the UK, but should have just bought tickets and flown over.) though Birmingham is an odd place to have hosted it: still bin strike/ transport issues.

i love the relays, but found the marathon team prize and odd concept.

There were loads of screens, I was looking at the ones nearest to us and some a bit further away depending on where my attention was.

I was there watching all week and for sure the morning sessions were not full. They never are. At the start of the week they were about half full. Maybe the organisers should have offered tickets at bargain prices to local schools in late July. But the evening sessions were really full and Fri-Sat-Sun night were sold out or just about. Amazing atmosphere. We took field cards and filled them in for all the finals and the multis #nerds.

I was at the World Champs in Budapest in 2023 and many tickets were available there as well, it's not unusual. They were a bit cheaper though tbf.

The home straight seats were wildly priced IMHO but to imply that only £150 tickets were available like some posts I saw on SM is nonsense. We watched every session with excellent seats which we could pick hurrah (so could choose an aisle); our worst seats were a couple of nights in the top tier of the N stand but it was fine. We spent approx £650 each on the whole week's tickets. That's 13 sessions. @MeetMeOnTheCorner were you there? The atmosphere in the evening was immense. You're wrong about many seats being £100 too. The most we paid for any ticket was £70. For seats like attached pic (the Sunday evening session for the fab MPV).

I agree re the kit tho – I prefer the blue or purple kit. The white vest that Wightman wore looked too much like the Italians and was confusing.

The athletics itself was amazing, so so good. So many things were ace but Jazmin Sawyers (in fact the WLJ comp in total) and the relays (agree re not breathing - we were sitting right by the second change and very stressed for it - "give Zharnel the baton Dina!") and Amy Hunt just wow. And Georgia. And Femke. And Keely and Werro (wow we shouted). And tbh Kat finishing the hept in not her best shape at all. Love love the decath too.

If you like a bit of fun, search out some of the videos of Adam Gemilli interviewing and also watching the 4x100 mixed relay.

@Parques the medal ceremonies were held at about 6pm and then after the session at about 10pm, outside the stadium. I thought that was a mistake. We watched a few but you couldn't see well and it was very hot and dusty. Plus we really wanted either to sit down in our seats ready to watch the athletics or go home (depending on the time!).

@Piggywaspushed we loved Bab! DD was delighted that I managed to grab a Bab postcard for her before a morning session.

That security incident was a nightmare for sure. We were walking back to Perry Barr each night (service buses in the evening a genuine nightmare) so we missed it.

Sorry you couldn't hear the PA, we heard it fine all week and really enjoyed it. We also found the screens really good (as I say we were filling in field cards so did need to see them). We were in the North stand on the lower tier on Sat night.

Sounds like yiu went to a great session, clary! Bab was adorable. He must have been so very hot ! We were south stand, Tuesday morning. We saw Femke and Keeley in heats. Thankfully, two stars who didn't get byes! Our seats had their view obscured by the discus nets so will have to bear that in mind for future events.

Yes I am not a fan of seeding faster sprinters through to the semis. Apart from anything else, on 100m day, that meant anyone in the first round needed to run three races in one day instead of two if they got to the final. Imani Lansiquot for example, who is a sub-11 sprinter and won a gold in the W4x100, didn't get to the final of the 100m, maybe bc she had that morning's race still in her legs.

@Piggywaspushed Bab rode a rubber duck in the steeplechase water jump at one point and fell in. Bet he was happy :)

@clary Earlier in the week the stands were nowhere near full! Athletes commented on it. This was the evening sessions and there were vast numbers of seats vacant. It looked bad.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner you said this It looked way more than half empty to me on many occasions. You also asked if the stadium was used for much else and called it a white elephant. Maybe you are not a big athletics fan (which is fine ofc!). The stadium is certainly not a white elephant. As others have noted it is used extensively as a club track (Matt Hudson-Smith's home track) and for many events such as English Schools, UK champs and a lot more.

That's why I asked if you were there. Several athletes actually commented in interviews I saw about how there was a good atmosphere even in the morning sessions (enthusiastic fans like us haha). Yes, those were certainly not full. But attendance was posted for the evening sessions and the smallest I recall was about 14,000 in a stadium that is sold out at 23,000. There were seven evening sessions and Fri-Sat-Sun were basically sold out; Weds and Thurs were well over 3/4 full. Not vast numbers of vacant seats on many occasions.

It's easy for the media to talk the champs down – take a picture of the big upper stand at 9.30am and there are three people in there. But take a picture of the back straight stand at 11am and it will be a lot fuller. On the Thursday morning session (which was a very very hot day) it was decath PV and there were thousands of people still watching that in the back straight stand until about 4pm (a session that started at 10am).

Food was expensive – well of course. But I saw lots of posts on SM of people saying "it's not fair that we can't take our own food and water" – but you could! We took full water bottles and snacks. People could have taken a full picnic if they wanted.

Meant to say - there were issues at these champs (medal ceremonies in the wrong place IMHO, uncoordinated public transport, no extra buses despite promising them, very hot days in open unroofed stands) but lack of atmosphere was not one.

@clary I love athletics but a club doesn’t need 23,000 ! It’s barely used to capacity! Ever. Whether I like the sport or not, I can see this event was not as good as it should have been.

The stats are: Average attendance was 16,800 across 13 sessions. There were 3 sold out sessions so 10 were not. So that’s 14,940 average in 10 sessions and some were busier than others. On the opening evening, only 14,000 seats were filled. So maybe not half empty every evening but the morning sessions probably were near to that. It was obvious there were swathes of unfilled seats.

The athletes were all prompted to talk about atmosphere in a bid to sell
more tickets but the tv coverage did note poor attendance and it was very noticeable. I actually want successful events here and this should have been promoted a lot more. Many said you would never have known in was on in Birmingham. Too expensive and not enough publicity.

@MeetMeOnTheCorner so even on the opening evening more than half the seats were filled. This is my point. It's easy to make it look as tho it more than half empty, as you said it was.

Yes attendance was down for morning sessions. It always will be. As I said, we went to the World champs in Budapest and no session inc evening ones was anything like full.

I agree btw that there were issues with these champs and I wish the organisers had made more effort to fill the seats (esp for mornings) with (for example) groups from West Mids schools (we saw a few such groups) by giving them the tickets for a few £. And yes some tickets were expensive. But plenty were cheaper. Equiv of our seats on Saturday night (£60) at this year's London Diamond League were £95.

I just wish the media coverage would have focused more on what great athletics was happening.

(btw the stadium holds a lot fewer than 24k normally)

When the Commonwealth Games came to Birmingham, there was a lot of publicity and locals really got on board with it. It seemed like everyone I knew went to some or even many events. I - like most people I spoke to - applied for tickets for the athletics but couldn't get them.

Now, I know the Euros are different, in that they are only athletics, but we heard nothing about this championship before the event. I have SO loved watching it on TV, and would have bought tickets had it been marketed properly. When the Commonwealth Games came, we were all offered chance to go into a ballot to get tickets early.

(I'm not sure if we actually were, given how few seemed to get them, but it whipped up excitement about the actual event, and people were buying tickets the Autumn before the games.)
Then during the games, the City pushed the boat out and put up big screens and places to sit in the City Centre, and street entertainment etc etc - it was a wonderful festival of sport, which everyone knew was happening months before it started, and lots of schools and youth groups got involved doing projects about it in different ways.
The European Athletics Championship was a well kept secret though.
I'm on all sorts of local facebook groups and local e-mail lists, but didn't get ticket offers or info about the championships coming or travel arrangements or anything this time.

I don't know how much the lack of marketing was the fault of the Athletics organisers assuming there were enough people who normally follow athletics so they didn't have to market it to 'the general public' or if BCC could / should have done more, but it really wasn't promoted in Birmingham or the West Midlands anywhere near as much as it should have been.

Yes agree @JustGiveMeReason re the commies in Brum – I applied for tickets for 10 sessions (swimming, gymnastics and athletics) and got two athletics and one gymnastics. The sessions we were at then were sold out and I presume others were too.

I bought my tickets for the Euros a year ago as I am involved in athletics and got priority booking. So obvs I knew about them but agree it is poor if there was little or no publicity in the city itself this time.

@clary Splitting hairs somewhat! 9000 people missing out of 23,000 is a huge % that really should have been avoided. No one can hide 9000 empty seats. The stats show the evenings earlier in the championship needed far more marketing and athletics needs the merely interested supporter not just the mega fan going every night. There’s not enough of you.

I don't dispute (as in fact I have said) that it is a shame seats were not filled esp for less popular morning sessions with (say) schoolkids.

I just think it is a huge shame that so much media was focused on it. The narrative develops its own life, with people posting on SM "all the seats are £150, that's too much" - which was not the case at all. And actually the attendance was above that of a lot of recent Euro champs.

I saw someone today who knew I had been and the first thing they said was "Oh the stadium was almost empty for most sessions wasn't it?" Well no, it really wasn't.