| Sport: | Athletics |
| Founded: | 2017 |
| Current Season: | 2017 Nitro Athletics |
| Website: | Nitro Athletics.com.au |
Nitro Athletics was a track and field series featuring multi-day meetings between teams of twelve athletes. The teams contained both men and women and also para-athletics competitors. There are both national and international teams. The events contested were a mix of Olympic-standard events and variations on common athletics events.[1]
The series was created by Athletics Australia (AA). The president of the AA, Mark Arbib, stated his interest in creating a novel competition was the result of his seeing dwindling interest in traditional one-day track and field meetings, citing in particular low crowds he saw at the 2015 Sydney Track Classic.[2] The sport's leading star, Usain Bolt, was recruited as a co-investor and performer of the series. Despite breaking from the standard setup of athletics competitions, the series was supported by Sebastian Coe, head of the International Association of Athletics Federations.[3] [4]
The series was hosted at Lakeside Stadium in Melbourne over three separate days (4, 9, 11 February).[5] The six teams to feature were New Zealand, Australia, England, China, Japan and the Bolt All-Stars (a mix of athletes from the Americas and Africa).[6] [7] [8] The events attracted near-capacity crowds of the 8,000 seat arena and was broadcast on live television across many of the competing nations.[2]
Generalist media gave a positive response to the event, with the Herald Sun describing it as a "raging success".[9] The reaction from specialist media was more mixed, however, with Athletics Weekly saying the ideas "have been tried before. Nitro Athletics has merely thrown them all into one meeting".[10]
Athletics Australia announced that the planned 2018 series would not be held due to calendar constraints related to the Commonwealth Games being held on the Gold Coast in April.