As poster boy Armand Duplantis performed the Ultimate Championship’s official song and fireworks lit up the sky above the newly crowned winners, athletics had taken its first strides in a new direction.
Across three fast-paced evenings the inaugural event played out in Budapest, where a record $10m (£7.4m) prize pot was distributed among the sport’s biggest stars.
It looked different. It felt different. And, after three successive sell-out crowds and positive feedback from the athletes, it appears it is here to stay.
“It’s a good first step towards changing track and field for the better,” said Usain Bolt, event ambassador and the greatest sprinter in history.
“The athletes are loving it. It’s a different energy, a different vibe.”
World Athletics and its president, Lord Coe, worked for three years to tackle the absence of a season-ending pinnacle event.
Rather than keeping to an established formula, the Ultimate Championship was a bold, innovative undertaking – and it is hoped it can exist as a testing ground to help shape the sport’s future.
“We walked out, we came through the little starlights and we all looked at each other and said, ‘this is unbelievable’,” Britain’s four-time global relay medallist Imani-Lara Lansiquot told BBC Sport.
“It’s so rare that things really live up to the expectation, the hype. I’m so, so glad, having been in this sport for many years now, to actually see us be put on a platform and celebrated in this way.”
