Even for a sport that considers itself the world’s oldest, 2021 was a year for the ages for global track and field.

A group of young, charismatic, world record-shattering stars produced an Olympic Games in Tokyo that merited comparison to the gold standard of Olympics, the 1968 Games in Mexico City, which were immortalized by an iconic and courageous U.S. team and the launch of Kenya’s distance running dynasty.

The likes of U.S. hurdler Sydney McLaughlin, shot putter Ryan Crouser, distance runner Sifan Hassan of the Netherlands, Jamaican sprinter Elaine Thompson-Herah, pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis of Sweden and Norwegian hurdler Karsten Warholm helped track and field regain its place as the Summer Olympics’ premier sport according to a series of marketing, broadcast, and social media metrics in addition to the group’s record-breaking performances.

“It is the golden generation,” said Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, track’s international governing body. “I’ve never been more optimistic about the strength and breadth of what’s coming through in our sport.”

That talent provides World Athletics, Coe said, both “a challenge and an opportunity” as the sport looks toward the 2022 World Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in July, the first time an event surpassed only by the Olympic Games and World Cup in global importance will be held on U.S. soil.

The success of the Worlds at Hayward Field, and the reach and depth of the event’s legacy, Coe said, are not only critical to increasing the sport’s footprint in the U.S. but growing the sport internationally as well.

“I want all our member federations to recognize that this isn’t just an isolated championships, you know, and then we move on to another city,” Coe, the two-time Olympic 1,500-meter champion for Great Britain, said in an interview Friday with the Orange County Register, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today. “There are some opportunities here that we cannot allow to slide by.”

The Worlds, the Commonwealth Games and the European Championships crowd a 2022 summer vacated by the World Cup, which was moved to November and December because of the high temperatures in host nation Qatar. The upcoming summer followed by the 2023 Worlds in Budapest, the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris and another Worlds in 2025 at a yet-to-be-determined location give the sport an unprecedented opportunity to raise its profile.

“The opportunity that is created is that really for the next four years we have track and field sitting center stage in the most broadcastable part of the year, and if I move beyond the four years I can arguably say that for seven years, and that’s an opportunity we musn’t squander,” Coe said.

At the top of the list is the Worlds (July 15-24) in the Willamette Valley college town that for decades has referred to itself as “Tracktown, USA.”

“On opportunities we mustn’t squander, Eugene, Oregon next year is a huge moment for us and we should be absolutely aware of that,” said Coe, who is also an International Olympic Committee member and was president of the 2012 London Olympics organizing committee.

“Every sport is wanting to get into the U.S.,” Coe continued. “It is still the most potent of the sports marketing environments. Every member federation I sit down with is doing everything it can to get into the U.S. and for good reason. We have that opportunity this year. I see this as very much a runway through to 2028 and in simple terms, we have to do everything we possibly can to create a greater perception and penetration of track and field not just in the U.S. but globally.

“But if you create that in the U.S., which is still the powerhouse of track and field but perversely you still have athletes who are known globally but can still walk through their own towns in anonymity. We have a really important role and job to play here, and in my latest communication to member federations at the end of the year I have talked about the importance for all of us of making the most out of Oregon ’22.”

Coe, a former global ambassador for Nike, acknowledged the argument that if track and field is to truly leave a significant footprint in the U.S. it needs to increase its presence in major American cities, in particular, New York and Los Angeles, the nation’s two largest media markets.

Nike, USA Track & Field’s primary financial backer, was co-founded by legendary Oregon coach Bill Bowerman and Phil Knight, a former Duck miler. The company and by extension Eugene has delivered the American sport through tough times, in particular the late 1980s and 1990s. But many have wondered whether U.S. track has become too tied to Nike and Tracktown?

Eugene has hosted the last four Olympic Trials, eight of the last 12 NCAA Outdoor championships. In 2022, a rebuilt, tricked up Hayward Field, the $200 million House that Uncle Phil Built, will host the Worlds, both the NCAA and USA Track & Field Championships, as well as the Prefontaine Classic, the world’s premier single-day meet and the only U.S. stop on the Diamond League schedule.

So how does the sport grow in the U.S. if every major domestic meet is held within the friendly confines of Hayward Field?

“That is a challenge and you’re absolutely right,” Coe said. “I wish that we’d been given more options around other American cities that came to the table. We didn’t and that’s, USA Track & Field has to make that judgment. I think there are some areas where we have helped.”

Coe said his organization views the World Championships not so much as a 10-day meet but a long-term development project.

“I want World Athletics to have a project mentality towards this event …” he said. “Look, it is important to build that footprint in the U.S. As I’ve said to the ecosystem that is our sport that if we can get this right or if we can certainly get a bit more of the action in the U.S. sports marketing space then this will help us grow the sport globally.”

That marketing will be centered around a group of athletes, many of whom are only beginning to enter the prime of their careers, who have already displayed, Coe said, “jaw-dropping” performances.

“We have a great opportunity both with (U.S.) and international athletes to help us drive that message,” he said. “So yeah, we have a responsibility to them as well to make sure that, where possible, we globalize.”

Coe is one of only two men in history, and the only one since World War I, to successfully defend the Olympic 1,500 gold medal. Both Coe’s triumphs were against the backdrop of boycotts, Jimmy Carter’s refusal to let U.S. athletes compete in Moscow in 1980 because of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan and Eastern bloc nations skipping the Los Angeles Games four years later.

“The tit for tat in ’84,” Coe said.

Coe dismissed calls for a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing this coming February because of China’s human rights abuses and handling of protests in Hong Kong. The Biden administration said it will not send diplomats or other high-ranking officials to the Beijing Games.

The Diamond League will hold two meets in China this summer. Nanjing will host the 2023 World Indoor championships

“I am comfortable about holding our events there,” Coe said.

“There’s no ambiguity in my beliefs on this,” Coe said. “I believe two things: sport is the most potent social worker we have in all our communities. Absolutely. It does it 24/7. It does it more effectively than any other activity. My second core belief is that, used properly, it is also the deftest of international diplomats. I’ve seen this time and time again.

“Boycotts are historically illiterate and intellectually dishonest. The only people they damage are the athletes. They ask sport to do the heavy lifting that government should be doing and diplomatic boycotts are a meaningless gesture. So I’m happy to have that on the record.”

Coe said he worked with human rights groups as head of the London Olympics organizing committee and has used his organization’s leverage regarding working conditions in negotiations with local organizers and government officials in nations hosting World Athletics events.

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“But I’m not oblivious, nor is sport, nor should it be to the realities of taking sport globally and countering cultural, social and political difficulties and challenges,” said Coe, a Conservative Party member of Parliament in the 1990s. “Nor should it flinch from pointing out those shortcomings. But I would say as a federation president and also government minister for a time, I have far more uncompromising conversations with sporting organizations and governments around the world about what I expect in terms of human rights and labor conditions around the construction of our venues than I ever would have had as a politician or a minister who is normally chasing trade deals. So I tend to feel sport is an amplifier of those issues.

“I live in a world of practicality, where negotiation and discussion takes place at every level. Rarely have I seen it bear fruit if you pull up the draw bridge and decide well we can have our bilateral agreements and we call sit there in intergovernmental conversations but when it comes to sport we sit the dance out. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense to me.

“That is not at the same time condoning in any way human rights abuses, but sport is not the international panacea. It cannot do the heavy lifting that governments often shy away from, nor should it be used as the low-hanging fruit to make meaningless gestures.”