The Museum of World Athletics (MOWA) gears up for the World Championships by remembering some of the great performances from the past

Oregon will become the centre of the athletics world this week with the arrival of the 18th edition of the World Athletics Championships. There will be top-class action at every turn but it won’t just be what’s happening in and around Hayward Field that will be worth seeing. 

World Athletics’ Heritage are already there in force, too, staging two exhibitions full of artefacts which will fascinate the track and field fans who are expected to arrive from all over the globe. 

The MOWA Track and Field Heritage Exhibitions are to be found both in the state capital of Portland and, of course, in the championships host city of Eugene ­– at the EMU building on the University of Oregon campus, less than a 400m walk away from Hayward Field.

Visitors will be able to get up close to pieces of athletics history which have been at the heart of some of the great sporting moments seen through the years. 

Here is a sample of what can be found at the Eugene exhibition but, if you can’t be there in person, you can view and learn more about these amazing items by visiting the immersive 3D interactive experience of MOWA online. 

Usain Bolt Singlet and competition number, 2011 

In any exhibition charting the history of athletics, it would be remiss not to have an artefact from Usain Bolt and the Jamaican sprinting superstar has generously donated a singlet and number from the 2011 World Championships in Daegu, where he won the 200m and helped set a world record in the 4x100m.

The two items shown here are especially important as they are mementos of Bolt returning to his usual stunning form after his shock disqualification for a false start in the 100m final. In the longer sprint, perhaps mindful of his 100m disaster earlier in the championships, he started cautiously but was soon into his running and well in the lead halfway into the race before winning in 19.40.

He was to win again over 200m at the next two World Championships – in Moscow and Beijing. On a historical note, this was only the second World Championships with names on bibs, rather than numbers, the practice having been introduced two years earlier in Berlin.

Haile Gebrselassie, 10,000m singlet & bibs, 1999

The 10,000m in Seville saw the Ethiopian great win his fourth consecutive world championships gold medal over 25 laps of the track and this singlet and number will be familiar to anyone who has ever watched the race.

Gebrselassie took the lead on the penultimate lap with a long surge for home in the searing Andalusian heat, uncorking a 54.37 last lap and running away from his rivals before crossing the line in 27:57.27. The time was irrelevant in the conditions but the moment eternally memorable.

The race led to him being talked about in the same breath as Paavo Nurmi and Emil Zatopek when consideration was given to who was the world’s greatest distance runner. The following year, in Sydney, Gebrselassie went on to retain the Olympic 10,000m title he had won in 1996.

Marie-José Pérec, 400m singlet, 1995

Marie-José Pérec regained the 400m world title she had won four years earlier in Tokyo in this apparel, her country’s only gold medal in Gothenburg.

The Frenchwoman ran relatively conservatively through the first half of the race but took the lead coming into the home straight and was never headed, crossing the line in 49.28 for the fastest time in the world over one lap of the track in three years.

In addition to her two world titles, Pérec also won three Olympic gold medals, the 400m at the Barcelona 1992 Olympic Games and then both the 200m and 400m at the following Games in Atlanta four years later.

Anita Wlodarczyk’s hammer, 2015

After being injured while apprehending a thief who was trying to steal her car, Anita Wlodarczyk sadly won’t be in action in Eugene – but this hammer serves as a reminder of the Pole’s throwing prowess. 

This was the implement which helped her retain her world title in Beijing, having won not only in Moscow but also six years earlier in Berlin, but it has another special place in athletics history.

Wlodarczyk was using this hammer in the northern Polish town of Cetniewo four weeks before the World Championships when she set a world record of 81.08m, the first time that any woman had thrown the 4kg implement further than the 80-metre line in competition.

She also threw beyond 80 metres in Beijing, reaching a championship record of 80.85m, and subsequently set further world records in 2016 as well as winning the 2016 Olympic title in Rio and then adding a fourth world title in London the following year. She won her third Olympic title at Tokyo 2020.

Allyson Felix’s 200m spikes

Oregon22 will be the final major international championships of Allyson Felix’s remarkably lengthy and illustrious career.

The legendary sprinter was still a teenager and three months away from her 20th birthday when she first tasted World Championships competition, back in 2005, but she immediately looked to the manor born.

There was no sign of nerves or inexperience as these spikes helped propel her to 200m gold in 21.81 seconds, in Helsinki’s Olympic Stadium.

She came off the bend level with Jamaica’s Veronica Campbell but then flew down the home straight to finish almost five metres clear of her rival for a winning margin that had not been seen at a global championships since 1948.

The lightweight sprint spikes Felix wore were among the early examples of a shoe manufacturer producing a pair with different colours on each foot, a trend which is still popular. To date, the American has won 13 world titles and seven Olympic gold medals in the 200m, 4x100m and 4x400m. 

Willie Banks’ world record-breaking triple jump singlet and number

Athletics fans in Britain will associate the triple jump with current world record-holder Jonathan Edwards, but before him it was Willie Banks who broke new ground in the event. 

The American was one of the most exuberant performers on the international circuit during the 1980s and a popular competitor around the world.

This singlet was worn when he set a world triple jump record of 17.97m at the 1985 US national championships in Indianapolis, adding eight centimetres to the previous record set in 1975 by Brazil’s Joao Carlos de Oliviera.

It would be more than 10 years before Edwards improved this mark.

He might have been a record-breaker but Banks’ record at major international championships perhaps did not quite match the level of his talent. He did, however, win the triple jump silver medal at the inaugural 1983 IAAF World Championships and was also victorious at the 1985 World Cup. Since 2019, Banks has been an elected member of the World Athletics Council. ω

Mike Powell’s long jump world record singlet and numbers

In Tokyo, what many consider to be the greatest field event contest in athletics history unfolded at the 1991 World Championships, as two Americans went toe to toe in an epic long jump battle.  

Having seen his rival and compatriot Carl Lewis produce wind-assisted leaps of 8.83m and 8.91m in the third and fourth round, the pressure was firmly on Mike Powell.

However, he unleashed a jump close to nine metres and, after an agonising pause, a legal wind reading was confirmed. The figures of 8.95m flashed up on the scoreboard. Bob Beamon’s world record of 8.90m from the 1968 Olympic Games had finally been broken.

In response, Lewis produced legal efforts of 8.87m and 8.84m with his last two jumps – the best of an illustrious career which included four Olympic long jump gold medals, but for once he had to settle for second best. Powell’s Tokyo leap remains the current world record.

By the 1990s, the design of the USA singlets had changed considerably from those worn by Powell, Lewis and their team-mates in the 1980s, an example of which is shown here. In Tokyo, a predominantly white singlet was issued to Powell and his fellow Americans. 

Powell was to return two years later at the next world championships in Stuttgart, Germany, and retain his long jump title.