World athletics supremo Sebastian Coe is upbeat that
the famous blue running track in Berlin's Olympic Stadium will stay,
despite ideas to turn the arena into a football stadium.
"I met with Berlin mayor Michael Mueller during the [current
athletics] Euros and he assured me that the track will remain in the
Olympic Stadium," the IAAF president Coe told the Tagesspiegel paper
in an interview made available ahead of Sunday's publication.
"This stadium is iconic, it is a historical site. Of course, a few
things are uncomfortable. But is a historian, I tell you: you don't
reconstruct your history."
The stadium was built for the 1936 Olympics in then-Nazi Germany,
with American Jesse Owens famously winning four gold medals. The
track got its blue colour for the 2009 athletics world championships,
at which Jamaican Usain Bolt ran his 100-metre and 200m world
records.
The main tenant of the city-owned stadium, Bundesliga club Hertha
Berlin, wants a football-only arena for a better atmosphere. Plans
range from rebuilding the Olympic Stadium into such an arena to
Hertha building a new stadium elsewhere.
A final decision is yet to be made.
Coe reiterated that athletics needs fundamental changes to stay
relevant, saying: "We have to be courageous. Our sport hasn't changed
enough ... We need strong one-day meets. They should last only 90
minutes or two hours."
The previous day Coe had spoken favourably about the so-called
Dynamic New Athletics (DNA) competition for the 2019 European Games,
a two-hour team event in which traditional elements, such as 100m
runs, are combined with head-to-head field events and a so-called
Track'Athlon, in which athletes pull a sleigh and do a standing long
jump.
"I like what they are doing - I like it a lot," the insidethegames
portal quoted Coe as saying. "I think it's an innovative, thoughtful
approach to try to ignite even more excitement among young people."