Indoor Track Venues Raise Awareness of the Sport

Before Noah Lyles made history in Paris by winning the men’s 100-meter dash in a photo finish, he won a national indoor championship by 0.01 seconds in the 60-meter dash in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The sport itself has seen a variety of new facilities come online in the past few years and off an outdoor season marked by Olympic success in Paris, the coming months will be a litmus test of continuing the sport’s fan awareness.

From the dozens of collegiate meets culminating with the NCAA championships in Richmond in mid-March to a series of USA Track & Field events, the indoor track-and-field season is about to kick into high gear. The New Balance Indoor Grand Prix in Boston on February 2 is a high-profile meet along with the traditional Millrose Games at The Armory in New York six days later. The end of February also sees a USATF Masters event in Gainesville, Florida, before the USATF Indoor Championships in Staten Island.

New Facilities Opening

From The Podium in Spokane and Norton Healthcare Sports & Learning Center in Louisville, both of which opened in 2021, plus new venues in the past five-plus years in Indianapolis, Chicago and Virginia Beach, a number of indoor track facilities have come online around the United States.

The building surge has been based in part on geography as well as an effort to increase visitation in the winter sports season, traditionally a slower travel season, especially outside of the Northeast. When an indoor track opened in the Reno-Sparks Convention Center, it was spurred by a 2021 commissioned by the Reno-Sparks Convention and Visitors Authority that suggested indoor track competitions could bring up to 24,000 room nights in year one and up to 50,000 room nights by year two.

“The sport’s always been very big in the Midwest and on the East Coast,” said John Mansoor, executive director, Pacific Association for USA Track & Field, during the Reno track opening. “A place like New York or Boston, they have multiple facilities. You go west of the Rockies, there are four facilities.”

The Armory Co-President Jonathan Schindel added that as venues come online — new facilities in the past few years include Boston, Staten Island and Philadelphia — the legendary New York City venue is bucking conventional wisdom on booking events.

“Rather than taking pieces of a static pie, it’s growing that pie and there’s more participation all around,” Schindel said. “We’re seeing increases in every category from last year. The increase in facilities is not drawing people away from The Armory, it’s rather drawing people into the sport.”

The ability to stretch indoor participation outside of the collegiate scene in new markets is important to keep people engaged in the sports year round.

“The months of December, January and February have been chill, hang out, maybe we’ll watch an indoor meet on TV, but there’s nothing going on,” Mansoor said. “Now all of a sudden everybody is thinking, well, now we have eight new track meets in Reno this year alone. It’s going to raise the level of the sport considerably.”

Existing Facilities Keeping Up

The level of indoor track accomplishments has been very high in New York for more than a century thanks to the Millrose Games. Formed in 1908 by employees of the John Wanamaker Department Store (hence the Wanamaker Mile at the event), the meet for over a century was held at Madison Square Garden, attracting legends of the sport that would take a mile to list.

In 2012, the Millrose Games found a new home at The Armory, an historic but state-of-the-art facility thanks to consistent updates and renovations. The Armory annually hosts over 100 track-and-field competitions, training for more than 220,000 athletes and 300,000 visitors ranging from elementary school youth to senior citizens.

“From second grade through seniors, all our programs have seen an impressive increase in participants,” Armory Co-President Rita Finkel said. “It’s almost like the more tracks that are built, the more people talk about it and the more people do it. I think we’re pleased with the increases year over year.”

Finkel said The Armory is on pace to sell out this year’s Millrose Games faster than any other meet in its history in part because of the venue’s reputation as the fastest indoor track in the world. This year’s meet atmosphere will be enhanced by having nearly 500 spectators on the track level in seats or standing room only areas.

“More records have been set on this track than any other,” Finkel said. “The seats and the audience are so close to the track. The performances are tremendous because the entire audience is breathing as one and cheering them on. The roar is just like nothing I’ve ever heard.”

Those roars were almost muted at Madison Square Garden, where the Millrose Games’ attendance had fallen over the decades until the event moved to The Armory. “There was a tremendous amount of responsibility that we’ve felt,” Finkel said. “We’ve been given this gem, an institution that had fallen on hard times. We have tried to honor this tradition and build on it.”

Schindel added that the venue’s reputation around the New York metropolitan area helps with the number of youth events it holds in addition to high school, college and an international Grand Prix. There’s also a group of those for whom attending the Millrose Games is a rite of passage passed through generations — Schindel being one of them, remembering when his father took him to meets at the old Garden.

There’s also the wave of success by U.S. athletes in Paris, where the Americans won a combined 14 gold medals and 34 medals in athletics overall, romping over the rest of the field.

“The last few Millrose Games since Covid, we have had multiple people tap us on the shoulder and say this is the best one we’ve ever had,” Schindel said. “I can point to the great success and popularity that the U.S. had at the Olympics but I can also point to the last several Millrose Games and how amazing they were. That bleeds over.”

Expanding the Sport’s Awareness

That crossover from outdoor to indoor is music to the ears of USATF Head of Sport Performance Duffy Mahoney, who has consulted on several indoor facilities over the years and is a veteran of the Northeast track scene, having raced at The Armory’s splintered board track floor in the 1960s as a high schooler.

“It helps grow the sport,” Mahoney said of the indoor season. “It’s good for the development of our phenomenally successful high performance unit. And it’s good for the communities and becoming identified with the sport, which is obviously very visible to everybody.”

That visibility and growth are the two pillars of what is important for two important leaders: USATF Chief Executive Officer Max Siegel and World Athletics President Sebastian Coe.

“Max has charted a course that we want to grow the sport so that we have a viable indoor circuit, not only an outdoor circuit,” Mahoney said. “And that ties into Seb along with Max saying over these next four years, particularly, we want to continue to try to grow that sport to get more visibility, more television exposure.”

That exposure this season will come from NBC, which will have coverage of the New Balance Grand Prix in Boston, Millrose Games and Indoor Nationals in Florida. USATF’s own platform will also showcase the Nike Indoor Nationals in mid-March. Mahoney points out the exposure from those events can then transition into the spring outdoor season with a variety of events including the Drake Relays, Penn Relays, the USATF’s own Grand Prix series and the new Grand Slam Track series that will have multiple events in the U.S.

“It’s not expanding the sport per se but expanding the venues that have high-level events to get more viewers on television,” Mahoney said. “And hopefully more spectators come in those venues and then move outdoors from there.”