Track unveils Diamond League series

BRUSSELS (AP) — Track and field is launching a Diamond League for 2010, a series of at least 12 international meets pitting the sport’s biggest stars against each other on a more regular basis.

The International Association of Athletics Federations wants to expand its worldwide appeal outside Europe. It will add two meets in the United States (New York and Eugene, Ore.) and one in China, with a likely extension into the Middle East. The Diamond League replaces the Europe-based six-meet Golden League.

“The dream came through,” IAAF president Lamine Diack said Monday. “We will have all the best meetings of the IAAF Diamond League going round the world.”

High-level competition involving track and field’s top names often falls through because of financial disputes among agents. The new series hopes to address this problem.

“Face-to-face meetings of our best athletes are very important,” Diack said in a conference call. “We will have it three to four times” during the meets each year.

The biggest stars will be tied to rich contracts for several of the meets, said Patrick Magyar, organizer of the Zurich Weltklasse meet.

Each Diamond League meet will offer $416,000 in prize money. With the expanded, streamlined calendar, track and field will more closely resemble the tennis circuit. The league will offer an “easily understandable series of meetings to provide world class entertainment,” Diack said.

The jackpot system, which gave the winner of all six Golden League meets $1 million in gold, will be scrapped. Instead, the series will feature an IAAF Diamond Race in each of 32 different track and field events. The season winner will get a 4-carat diamond worth about $80,000.

Four of the Golden League meets — Brussels, Zurich, Oslo and Paris — will be part of the new series. The two others, Berlin and Rome, are still to be confirmed. The Grand Prix in Doha, Qatar, was listed as “to be confirmed.” Diack is convinced the three will be on board well before next year, making it a 15-meet series.

Venturing outside track’s traditional cradle of Europe for the first time, the series will include two meets in the United States and one in Shanghai or Beijing.

Also taking a step up are two meets in Britain — Crystal Palace in London and Gateshead — and events in Lausanne, Switzerland, Stockholm and Monac