The World Athletics Ultimate Championship finally became a competition rather than a concept on Friday night, and the opening session in Budapest did roughly what its designers had promised. Six finals were compressed into three hours, the mixed 4x100m relay went off first rather than last, and by the end of the evening Armand Duplantis and Jakob Ingebrigtsen had each collected $150,000 from the championship's $10m prize fund. The compressed format gave the session an unfamiliar rhythm, with field events resolving while track finals were still being run, but it did not produce thin competition.
Duplantis won the pole vault with 6.20m and did so without a failure, which has become his characteristic way of closing out a title. Emmanouil Karalis took second on 6.15m after the bar came down at 6.20m, and the Greek's own attempt to stay in contention ended there. Duplantis then had the bar raised to 6.25m, a height that passed without a clearance. Sondre Guttormsen, Kurtis Marschall and Zachary Bradford all finished on 5.95m, with Sam Kendricks and Chris Nilsen among a group at 5.80m.
The men's 5000m provided the closest finish of the night. Ingebrigtsen, who had spent much of the season answering questions about his form rather than his results, produced the decisive move in the home straight to beat world champion Cole Hocker and win in 12:59.24. It was a tactical race resolved by a sprint rather than a sustained drive, which suited the Norwegian, and it settled the argument about whether the championship's invitation-led entry system would produce genuine head-to-head racing between the sport's best.
The United States took three of the six titles. Masai Russell won the 100m hurdles in 12.22, with Tobi Amusan second in 12.34 and Nadine Visser third in 12.39, and the American quartet won the mixed 4x100m in 39.64 ahead of Jamaica on 39.72 and Great Britain on 40.26. Elsewhere the honours were spread more widely: Merlin Hummel threw 81.46m to win the hammer ahead of home favourite Bence Halasz on 80.30m, Yaroslava Mahuchikh cleared 1.99m to take the high jump from Nicola Olyslagers, and Larissa Iapichino won the long jump with 6.90m.
Attention now turns to Saturday's second session, which carries the sharpest end of the sprint programme. Both 100m titles are decided, alongside the women's 800m and 1500m, with the women's javelin and pole vault and the men's long jump among the field events. The championship concludes on Sunday. On the evidence of night one, the format's main innovation is not the prize money but the pacing: with no heats and no dead time, the session's problem was keeping up rather than staying interested.