World Athletics said that approximately 20,000 athletes from 200 countries will compete in the 2024 Continental Tour, setting a record number of records in the process.
According to World Athletics, 2024 saw the biggest number of competitors on the Continental Tour ever, with over 20,000 athletes from over 200 countries competing over the course of roughly 270 meets.
There are four stages to the tour: Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Challenger. In 2024, World Athletics had events in each of the six continents. This witnessed one world record, 12 area records and 205 national records.
The record exploits were completed between January and September, with two more Challenger meetings in Japan and Paraguay coming up this and next month (October and November). Thanks to their outstanding accomplishments on the Continental Tour, athletes had the opportunity to put themselves to the test over their particular distances.
Eleven meetings were held in the Gold tier, which began in Melbourne in February and concluded in Zagreb in September.
The world discus record of 74.35 meters, established by Mykolas Alekna of Lithuania at the Oklahoma Throws Series World Invitational, a Continental Tour Bronze competition, was the highlight of the 2024 series, according to World Athletics.
Femke Bol, the bronze medallist in the Olympic 400m hurdles, became just the second woman in history to break 51 seconds in the same event by setting her own European record at the Resisprint La Chaux-de-Fonds with a time of 50.95. Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone holds the record.
As if that weren’t enough, world 800m champion Marco Arop established an area 1000m record of 2:13.13 in Zagreb, while Canadian Ethan Katzberg began his season at the Continental Tour Gold meeting in Nairobi with a North American record.
“I’m delighted that the Continental Tour continues to deliver against its four key goals: to provide a clearly understood global competition system which provides more prize money to athletes and encourages them to compete more regularly; to encourage meeting organisers to increase the quality and prize money of their meetings; to motivate new meetings to be established; and to grow the sport in new markets around the world,” World Athletics CEO Jon Ridgeon said in response to the impressive sta
In addition to the aforementioned primary objectives, he also stated that the Continental Tour Gold meets are always live-broadcast in over 140 countries worldwide and on the World Athletics Inside Track platform. It was also mentioned that announcements on the 2025 Continental Tour schedule will be made in the upcoming weeks.