World Athletics Ultimate Championship: Armand Duplantis stars as sport's new global event begins
The inaugural World Athletics Ultimate Championship has launched in Budapest, featuring a high-stakes format with significant prize money. Pole vault star Armand Duplantis headlined the opening night, which aims to modernize track and field for a global audience.
Why it matters
This new event represents a major effort by World Athletics to increase the commercial appeal and financial viability of track and field sports.
Image source, Getty Images Image caption, Armand Duplantis will perform the official song of the championship live in the stadium on Sunday
A bright pink sandpit and a pitch black infield. A brand new trophy and historic prize money.
The World Athletics Ultimate Championship is posed as something different in the sport, but some things stay the same - pole vault star Armand Duplantis taking centre stage.
As the inaugural competition's official song, which two-time Olympic champion Duplantis wrote and recorded, was played to a sell-out crowd of more than 20,000, all eyes fell on the Swedish 26-year-old as, yet again, it was just him against the world record.
Duplantis had already secured the title of inaugural champion in the event he has long dominated, and his $150,000 (£110,000) slice of the record $10m (£7.4m) prize pot on offer.
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