Editor’s note: Stuart Weir wrote this piece on opening day of the WA Ultimate Championships, September 11, 2026. The WA Ultimate Championships went from Sept 11-13 in Budapest, Hungary. The Championships were a resounding success! Stuart Weir, RBR senior writer for Europe, filed 11 stories from Budapest for RunBlogRun! This is the first of those eleven. Stuart is now on a well-deserved break this next week, after covering Diamond League, British Champs, Commonwealth Games, European Games, more DL, and finally, the Ultimate Games! Thanks, Stuart, for your 1.5 million words plus written for RunBlogRun!
World Athletics Ultimate Championship – Day 1
The World Athletics Ultimate Championship is a new biennial track and field invitational organized by World Athletics. It is a season-ending meet held in even-numbered years between World Championship years. The meet has a streamlined format geared toward television audiences, with limited fields for individual events featuring defending Olympic, World, and World Champions, Diamond League Champions, and entrants based on World Athletics rankings. A few athletes received wild cards – some Hungarian athletes to please the home crowd and some stars like Josh Kerr and Jakob Ingebrigtsen. Having Kath Merry as stadium announcer and Hannah England on TV commentary gave the event a familiar feel. The total purse is US$10 million, with event winners receiving US$150,000 each.
The inaugural event is being held this weekend over three days in Budapest at the National Athletics Stadium, which hosted the magnificent 2023 World Championships. The stadium has a smaller capacity than in 2023. The stadium looked close to capacity. One difference from 2023 is the weather. In 2023, it was extremely hot. Tonight (September 11), it was just 57°F when the event ended.
In some ways, the event seems similar to the Diamond League Final held last weekend, but the Ultimate includes disciplines not in the Diamond League, and shorter events have semi-finals as well as finals. The event lasted just about 3 hours and had 11 races (just 3 individual finals and a relay) and 4 field events. Some observers thought that was insufficient to fill three hours. Your old-fashioned correspondent enjoyed the range of the program but found the flashing lights a bit glitzy. One other comment on the stadium. My seat was in the back row of the top tier of the stand (bleachers), 96 steps above ground level, a great view although the athletes did look like midgets.
The event started with a mixed 4 X100 relay. Relays are always exciting, and the mixed aspect adds to the jeopardy. One female medal-winning athlete was asked how much practice she had had receiving and giving the baton to a male athlete. She replied, “Only the hour before the race.” USA won.
The race of the night was the men’s 5000, with Jakob Ingebrigtsen beating Cole Hocker. One expects East Africans to dominate such races, but five Americans finished in the top seven. Whatever you think of Jakob’s recent comments about his competitors, he is a great athlete, and it is exciting to see him running well again.
The most predictable result was Masai Russell winning the 100h in 12.22. In the men’s sprint hurdles, two athletes went sub-13, with Ja’Kobe Tharp (12.94) winning from Cordell Tinch (12.95). It is amazing how much the hurdles times have dropped this season. Keely Hodgkinson and Audrey Werro won the two women’s 800m semis, with Femke Broeders-Bol second, setting up a great final tomorrow.
Larissa Iapichino won the women’s long-jump with 6.90 from Jazmin Sawyers, a repeat of the European Championship result but with both athletes jumping significantly further at the earlier event – fatigue a factor, I guess. Similarly, the women’s high jump was a disappointment, with Yaroslava Mahuchikh winning from Nicola Olyslagers I.99 to 1.95, the only two athletes going beyond 1.91. In contrast, in Brussels last week there was a 2:01 and three other 1.95 or better – again the issue of whether athletes can be expected to compete at their best, week-in, week-out.
Mondo Duplantis, fit again, won the PV with 6.20 from Emmanouil Karalis (6.15), with three athletes on 5.95. Melin Hummel won the Hammer throw with 81.46. That was day one of three.
