Athletics Australia Inroduces Nitro Athletics Melbourne

Published On: 17 November 2016

Athletics Australia has recently announced the new International Nitro Athletics Melbourne competition set to take place in early 2017 as part of the Australian Summer Athletics Season.

At present the competition will include teams from Australia, England, China and Japan along with a team entitled the Bolt All Stars, led by none other than Usain Bolt.

In addition to this, the competition is still awaiting the announcement of one more team.

Nitro Athletics Melbourne was created following the demise of the Australian Athletics Tour (AAT).

In recent years the AAT has seen a decline in crowd numbers whilst also losing the interest of commercial sponsors and broadcast partners.

Athletics Australia could not identify a successful road forward for the existing AAT and henceforth have developed the Nitro Athletics Melbourne concept. 

This new competition is designed for an in-stadium and broadcast audience, taking a fast paced, team-based structure.

Nitro Athletics Melbourne will combine a number of concepts, some new and some seen before, welcoming the feedback and suggestions of the broader population.

Athletes will engage in activities which are traditionally unconventional, such as sitting in teams during the competition, offering comments during the rounds of field events and wearing technology which allows the audience to see live performance data. 

Athletics Australia is hoping that through the development of this new concept it will be able to help grow the profile of its athletes, whilst also bringing more money into the sport, resulting in overall greater support for the Australian athletes.

Australian athletes are given the opportunity to nominate themselves to be a member of the Australian team.

The 24-person squad will be announced closer to the event’s commencement. 

Nitro Athletics Australia is scheduled to take place on Saturday the 4th of February, Thursday the 9th of February and Saturday the 11th of February and will be broadcast live by Channel 7.