Stewardship vs. Support
Can World Athletics credibly govern professional track & field?
World Athletics is the undisputed governing body of Track & Field. It sets the rules and sanctions competitions. It controls eligibility, records, rankings, and access to the Olympic Games. In that sense, its stewardship of the sport itself is unquestioned.
World Athletics doesn’t define professionalism in name, but it defines it in practice by regulating who can compete, earn, and be recognized at the sport’s highest levels.
Once you look closely at World Athletics’ own language and operating model, a contradiction emerges that’s hard to ignore: the organization that controls access to professional competition doesn't provide, enforce, or guarantee professional infrastructure.
That gap is no longer theoretical. It’s structural.
What World Athletics says it optimizes for
World Athletics is very clear about its priorities. In its own words, modern athletics is no longer just about elite performance, medals, or records. It's about reaching new audiences, finding new hosts, and ensuring the maximum number of citizens can participate. That participation focus extends explicitly to road running and school athletics, starting as young as age seven.
None of this is wrong. In fact, it’s logical.
A global governing body should care about mass participation and youth pipelines. It should care about Olympic legitimacy and standardization.
Unfortunately, there’s seems to be little evidence of comparable attention to what happens after athletes exit those pipelines.
World Athletics talks a lot about growing the base but it says very little about supporting the apex.
Regulating professionals without building a profession
Despite this participation-first orientation, World Athletics still indirectly defines professional status. It regulates athlete eligibility and enforces conduct rules. It governs whereabouts, competition access, and sanctions. It monetizes elite performances through global championships and commercial rights.
In other words, it exercises employer-like control without assuming employer-like responsibility.
Professional track athletes operate in what is functionally a gig economy. There are no standardized contracts, minimum earnings, pension system or health insurance mandate. Prize money is episodic and highly stratified. Travel reimbursements often require athletes to front costs themselves. Income volatility is the norm, not the exception.
This isn’t an accidental oversight. It’s a design choice.
World Athletics has built robust infrastructure where it sees existential risk. Anti-doping enforcement is sophisticated and well funded. Integrity oversight is centralized. Olympic compliance is meticulously managed.
But when it comes to athlete livelihoods, responsibility is consistently externalized to sponsors, agents, national federations, or the athletes themselves.
That asymmetry matters.
The Diamond League illusion
The Diamond League is often cited as proof that professional track already exists. In reality, it functions more like a curated broadcast product than a professional league.
Participation is invite-based and income is meet-by-meet. There's no season-long employment relationship, no guaranteed floor, and no collective bargaining mechanism. A handful of stars do well but most elite athletes don't.
The result is a system that looks professional to fans and sponsors while remaining structurally amateur beneath the surface.
This is why breakaway attempts like Grand Slam Track keep appearing. Not because athletes are greedy or naïve, but because the existing system offers no stability. When a league promising base pay collapses under financial pressure, it isn’t proof that athletes asked for too much. It’s evidence that the ecosystem is fragile precisely because no central steward has built durable infrastructure.
Stewardship has limits
Based on a close reading of World Athletics’ own positioning, one conclusion stands out to me:
World Athletics can credibly claim stewardship of the sport, but it doesn't credibly steward professional athletes.
Stewarding a sport means maintaining rules, integrity, and global continuity. Stewarding professionals means ensuring that the labor force generating commercial value isn't structurally precarious.
Right now, World Athletics is doing the former while disclaiming responsibility for the latter, even as it continues to define professional status and extract value from professional performances.
That’s the paradox.
This isn’t a moral critique. It’s a governance one.
This article isn’t arguing that World Athletics is malicious or incompetent. It’s arguing that its incentives are misaligned with professional outcomes.
An organization optimized for participation growth, Olympic cycles, and global standardization will naturally underinvest in career infrastructure. Those goals don’t require it. In fact, a deep, replaceable pipeline of athletes reduces pressure to build it.
But once World Athletics determines who may participate, earn, and advance at the professional level, it assumes a responsibility it currently refuses to operationalize.
At that point, the question isn’t “should World Athletics pay athletes more.” It’s whether it should continue to define professionalism at all without building the systems that make a profession viable.
A narrow but necessary path forward
The solution doesn’t require World Athletics to become a league operator or an employer. It requires clarity.
Either professional athlete stewardship becomes a defined responsibility, with minimum standards around compensation, health coverage, and post-career security, or the definition of “professional” must be meaningfully limited.
Right now, the sport lives in the middle ground: maximum control, minimum obligation.
That position is becoming harder to defend.
The takeaway
World Athletics has done an effective job governing Track & Field as a global sport. It has built legitimacy, standardization, and continuity at scale.
What it hasn't done is ensure that professional athletes are stewarded by any entity at all.
By indirectly defining access to professional opportunity without building or enforcing professional infrastructure, World Athletics occupies a position of control while leaving a stewardship vacuum beneath it.
Stewardship of the sport exists but stewardship of professional athletes doesn't.
The longer that gap remains unaddressed, the more pressure will continue to build—from athletes seeking stability, from alternative models attempting to fill the void, and from a fan base that increasingly senses something is off, even if it can’t yet articulate why.