Thanks to CITIUS MAG, I had my first opportunity to go behind the scenes at a European Diamond League.

In terms of track meets on the circuit, this is probably the gold standard, with a nearly full stadium of over 35,000 fans each night, and the distinct impression that the meet was really important to the host city with branded cars and uniforms everywhere. There were also massive police escorts for all the athlete and media buses to and from the venue.

Covering a track meet:

To cover the meet as a member of the media, the first step is obtaining accreditation by sending an application using an online portal. It’s a bit of a waiting game, with accreditation normally only being approved a week or two before the meet. I had already booked my travel and accommodation, so I bought a ticket to the meet as a backup. I wasn’t confident I would be approved given it was my first time and I hadn’t heard anything for several weeks after I applied.

A couple of days before the meet, I got an email with details on where to collect accreditation. Whenever you go to a meet, you will see lots of people wearing a giant (and rather ugly) looking card on a lanyard around their necks – from meet staff to athletes, coaches, VIPs and media members. This shows the security staff which areas each person can access.

Once you have collected accreditation, it is a case of working out where you need to go. I imagine the majority of media members are repeat visitors, so there is relatively little guidance given on where to go and what to do next. Thankfully, I had Anderson Emerole alongside me to show me the ropes, as well as some of the British media who I know are all very friendly.

As a media member, we get access to a number of different areas:

1. The media room – This is in the meet hotel where the athletes are staying. It’s also where the media pick up their accreditation and can go to work. It also hosts the pre-meet press conferences.

2. The press room – This is where media members can sit and work. There are also snacks and drinks available (nothing too gourmet; in this case, it was water, coke and cheese sandwiches, albeit I have heard rumours of meets that offer free ice cream. These meets will be going higher up on the list of meets I want to cover in future!). There’s also an adjoining room for press conferences, which was really only used for Mondo Duplantis at this meet, but might have been brought into more action if there had been something particularly special, like a world record performance.

3. The press tribune in the stadium – This is a section that has desks, additional monitors to plug into, and separate screens with access to the live results system.

4. The mixed zone – This is the area where athletes come through when they have finished competing where we’re able to interview them.

There are of course a number of different media outlets who all have their own section. This includes the TV broadcasters who have full-on professional cameras and lighting set up, the written press who typically record audio interviews so they can type up quotes, TV outlets who do not have broadcast rights, and finally online media such as CITIUS MAG.

If we are able to get to the meet a day or two before, we would also look to attend the pre-meet press conferences and get some insights ahead of the meet. The whole Karsten vs Mondo event originated from discussions at a Diamond league press conference in 2023, so on occasion press conferences can definitely be interesting!

The mixed zone:

The area where athletes can give interviews is cunningly set up at meets so that athletes have to pass through it to get back to the locker room/changing room where they may have left their bags before going to compete. In track and field, there is typically no obligation for athletes to stop and talk to the media (other than the main broadcaster who might be doing in-stadium interviews as you often see with the likes of Lewis Johnson on NBC at USAs). However, the vast majority of athletes are happy to stop and chat if you call them over as they are passing by.

I was pleasantly surprised that athletes who had no idea who I was or which outlet I was representing were more than happy to come and chat. We were also quite fortunate that there weren’t many online media outlets in our section of the media zone, with only three English speaking outlets and a couple of European ones who only spoke to a few select athletes.

I ended up being able to get one-on-one interviews with a number of athletes. Whenever there was a particularly popular athlete such as Sydney Mclaughlin-Levrone, we agreed to do the interviews together, which is why you might see slightly longer interviews with multiple people asking questions. When the mixed zone is busier, it’s certainly a bit trickier to get those one-on-one interviews with more popular athletes, or even to get your questions in, as there’s a bit of a scrum with ten phones pointed in the athletes face. I’m pretty glad I didn’t have to deal with that in my first mixed zone experience!

One thing you may not know is that as a media member trying to interview athletes, we actually have relatively little idea of what is going on in the meet itself. Although there are big screens, they are not always fully visible, and you may well be interviewing another athlete while a race is going on. As I was using my phone for interviews, I actually brought along a second phone so I could look up the live results. Thankfully at this meet, we could ask athletes to reflect on their season as a whole and the plans for next season.

Athletes also do not come through in an orderly fashion, so you will sometimes miss people who walk past when you are doing another interview, or if you want to catch multiple people from the same event.

As there were two of us in the mixed zone from CITIUS, I was also able to get interviews with a few extra people, whereas with just one of us we may have had to prioritise a bit more. I was glad to speak to athletes like shot put Olympic Champion Yemisi Ogunleye and World U20 High Jump Champion Angelina Topic.

It was also great to see some of the athlete personalities shine. A particular shout out to Sydney Mclaughlin-Levrone, who many might think from her interviews as being fairly reserved. She was absolutely bouncing through the mixed zone on the second day, munching on a fresh Belgian waffle.