Hello, World. Meet (Eugene) Oregon.

 
Hayward Field, July 16, 2022, moments before the start of the Men's 100m final (screenshot from NBC Sports television broadcast).

When the International Association of Athletics Federations (now World Athletics) selected Eugene in 2015 as the host city for the 2021 World Athletics Championships, the prospect of hosting the greatest athletes on Earth to compete in the ultimate track and field event seemed dreamlike, too fantastic to imagine. Yet here we are: The Championships in all their glory have arrived and are in full-swing (albeit postponed by one year due to COVID-19). At this moment, Hayward Field in Eugene is very much the center of the track and field universe.
 
2,000 athletes from 192 member federations are competing in Eugene. Media coverage is worldwide. Next to the Olympics, the World Athletics Championships is the biggest stage there is for the sport. Previous host cities most recently include Moscow, Beijing, London, and Doha, with Budapest and Tokyo to follow Eugene. 2022 is the first time the event has occurred on American soil. That Eugene will forever be listed as the site of a Worlds Athletics Championship is heady stuff.
 
Despite being “too small and too remote—too parochial,” Tim Layden of NBC Sports describes Eugene at once as both a fitting host for the championships and an unlikely sports capital. In his background piece for NBC’s coverage, he details how our city became the heart of track and field in America, recounting Hayward Field’s storied history and the culture of running in Track Town USA.  He and many other afficionados of the sport regard Eugene as track and field, and track and field as Eugene. In Layden’s view, such a symbiosis is unique in American sports—an insightful and instructive observation by an outsider.
 
I am under no illusion about what hosting the World Athletics Championships will mean for Eugene going forward. After the lights have dimmed and the intoxicating high of Oregon ‘22 has passed, I expect Eugene will reap some benefits, but nothing suddenly transformative. Hosting a world-class athletics showcase does not confer stature as a world-class city. Eugene is destined to remain a smallish burg in a scenic state, a backwater even, but that is far from being a bad thing. We can build upon the championships by further reinforcing Eugene’s sense of identity, of which a uniquely elite reputation in the world of athletics plays a part. The greatest legacy of Oregon ’22 will be if it instills a lasting pride in Eugene and in what differentiates our small corner of the world from anywhere else.