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Avery Wen

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Article text courtesy of nytimes.com

Why Is the World’s Biggest Track Meet in a Small College Town in Oregon?

Eugene, Ore., has spent more than a century evolving into “TrackTown.” On Friday, the World Athletics Championships opened in this unlikely destination.

World championships in track and field generally take place in world capitals. Rome, Beijing, Moscow, Paris and London have all taken a turn hosting the biggest event in the sport other than the Olympic Games.

This year, it’s being held in the United States for the first time. So how exactly did the World Athletics Championships end up in Eugene, Ore., a crunchy university town of 170,000 that isn’t even the capital of its state?

The answer to that question involves the evolution of a collegiate-running powerhouse in the last 120 years as well as a few quirks of both history and the sneaker business that combined to make Eugene the unofficial capital of American running, or “TrackTown U.S.A.” as the city likes to call itself.