After seven straight days spent in the upper reaches of National Stadium in Tokyo, peering down at the finish line from my assigned media seat, I felt like it was time to get a more authentic perspective.
I had bought tickets for the Friday evening session, featuring U.S. sprint star Noah Lyles’ signature event, the 200-meter final, long before I knew that I’d be covering the championships. Since I had the seats anyway, I wanted to get a sense of what the experience has been like for paying fans.
After all, one of the key storylines of these worlds is National Stadium fulfilling its destiny as a premier athletics venue, after the COVID-19 pandemic forced organizers to hold the Tokyo Olympics here without spectators. The fan experience is arguably more important at this event than any other — it’s a chance at a do-over for the stadium and the city.
Even though it gets some use as a venue for major soccer and rugby matches, this will have been the first time for many people to visit National Stadium and get an up-close look at its design. It’s easy to forget that this could have been a very different stadium, with Zaha Hadid’s colossal, futuristic original plans sparking outrage among Tokyo residents concerned about the impact on its surroundings.
Walking from Sendagaya Station to the stadium along with fans, it is indeed difficult to imagine how the original design would have fit in. National Stadium is not small by any means, but its low-key wooden build nestles into its environment in a natural way. It feels like a part of the city.
The short trek to the stadium also offered the opportunity to see some of the heat countermeasures that were put in place to keep fans comfortable in a humid September — something that was not necessarily noticeable in the sweltering media zones. The Pocari Sweat-branded cool mist zone was getting robust usage even though the temperature dropped significantly on Friday, although there appeared to be little takeup throughout the week of the umbrella-shaped hats that organizers planned to distribute.
The stadium was originally intended to have its athletics track removed after the Olympics to make space for extra seating for other sports, but the plans were changed in 2021. I might feel differently about this decision whenever I come to watch a soccer game here, but right now it’s a fantastic athletics stadium.
Media seating at National Stadium is on the top level next to the finish line. That gets you a good look at the final seconds of each race, giving you a jump on coverage, but you’re quite far from the action and removed from the atmosphere. The experience in the middle tier on Friday was different altogether, surrounded by passionate fans rather than frantically typing journalists.
To my right was an enthusiastic family from Jamaica who said they were here for Jordan Scott in the triple jump and Bryan Levelle in the 200-meter finals. In front was a group of British friends on vacation cheering on 800-meter star Keely Hodgkinson. Behind me, a Japanese kid who couldn’t have been older than 3 was yelling “ganbare!” (“go for it!”) at anyone who ran past the nearest section of the track.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said before the championships that a total of 500,000 tickets had been sold, matching a target set by organizers the previous week when they announced they had reached a total of 450,000. Tokyo will likely be happy with the size and the diversity of the crowd at National Stadium; Coe called it “the largest global sporting event of the year by quite some distance,” and that claim has surely been justified by the turnout.
The stadium appeared to be sold out on Friday, save for a couple of empty sections that seem to have been sectioned off all week; fans were packed all the way to the top of the stands. That matched what I saw on the opening weekend, although the stadium wasn’t quite as full for the evening sessions on weekdays. Getting home on a work night is likely the concern for many — the sessions can run past 10:30 p.m., and anyone who stays until the end faces long lines at nearby train stations.
In some ways, the stadium itself didn’t seem fully ready to cope with the crowds. Fans arriving at 7:30 p.m. would have found that most of the food stalls inside had already sold out of everything but drinks, forcing a long walk around the concourse to find one of the few edible options that remained. Judging by the overflowing plastic in the recycling bins, organizers may also have underestimated the demand for ¥1,000 beers.
These are small complaints, though. From a viewer’s perspective, it’s hard to say that these World Athletics Championships have been anything other than a resounding success, whichever seat I’ve been watching them from.
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