New Golden League- to include London, Lausanne ,DN Galan

[mump boy]

As much as I dislike the Golden League,

I'm curious as to why. Aren't the GL meets some of the best of the season?

Not really. My favourite meetings last year were Lausanne, Stockholm and Monaco and the same events always crop up year after year (many which I find not very exciting). I preferred the old Grand Prix circuit, where there is a fairer system and every event was a Grand Prix event in a 2-year cycle.

agreed

for example in 97 astrid kumbernuss won the over all grand prix there i no way valeri villi can win as her event i never part of the GL :x

[gh]

I don't think the designation of those events as GP events required any meet organizer to include them in their program. They did for a number of possible reasons--the events were more popular then than they are now, the economics of staging these events were different, and meets then were longer than they tend to be now. ...

Given that it's almost a quarter-century now (yikes) I can no longer cite chapter and verse, but the IAAF did have requirements. You had to have a certain number of events which had a certain number of "world-class" people or you lost your funding. The IAAF actually sent a monitor to meets to do an on-site certification that that happened (I remember some touchy incidents on whether or not somebody counted if they acted solely as a rabbit for a lap or two).

To make numbers up (but hopefully pretty close), you had to have 12 events that qualified by having at least 6 athletes from the approved list (like the previous year's top 50). And overall you had to have at least 12 different nations represented (thus it was that U.S. meets would pay a relative fortune to fly in some obscure small-Islander to meet quota; lot easier in Europe).

And there were, of course, requirements that you have so many field events and so many women's events.

So it wasn't exactly "free will" on the meet promoter's part. Much more restrictive than today. And the promoters are happier for it. Nothing worse than being forced to sell a product that's not sellable.

[tandfman]

To make numbers up (but hopefully pretty close), you had to have 12 events that qualified by having at least 6 athletes from the approved list (like the previous year's top 50). And overall you had to have at least 12 different nations represented (thus it was that U.S. meets would pay a relative fortune to fly in some obscure small-Islander to meet quota; lot easier in Europe).

And there were, of course, requirements that you have so many field events and so many women's events.

IIRC, both numbers (number of GP events and number of qualified athletes per event) were lower than that, but you're right--there were such requirements.

So it wasn't exactly "free will" on the meet promoter's part. Much more restrictive than today. And the promoters are happier for it.

I'm sure you're right about that, too.