‘The Podium’ announces USATF national championships will be in Spokane in 2022

Downtown Spokane’s indoor sports complex will host a marquee event right out of the blocks.

USA Track & Field announced Saturday on a national NBC broadcast that The Podium will be the site of its 2022 national championship invitational. The event will bring the nation’s best runners, throwers and jumpers to the $53 million building just a few months after its planned opening this fall.

“The door kind of opened for U.S. nationals,” said Eric Sawyer, president and chief executive officer of Spokane Sports, which is handling programming in the building owned by the Spokane Public Facilities District and built on land leased by the city of Spokane’s Parks Department. The money for construction was raised through the sale of bonds authorized by Spokane County.

Athletes will have to hit specific performance benchmarks to be invited to the meet.

The 2021 nationals event has been canceled due to concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, and while the agreement doesn’t guarantee the event will take place as scheduled in February 2022, Sawyer said his team is optimistic.

“We’re in a pretty good position for the future,” he said.

Past indoor championships have been held mostly at facilities in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and New York City. The closest the event has come to Spokane was the 2016 meet, held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland.

The main attraction for the 2022 meet will be a banked, 200-meter hydraulic track, which is being installed in the facility off the north bank of the Spokane River after the frame of the building rose last year. Spokane Sports hopes for a “soft opening” during the fall months of the facility, Sawyer said, which will allow workers to prepare the building for events of national significance, like the USATF meet.

The timing of the event early in 2022 will also be advantageous, with several of the athletes competing in Spokane having just left the international stage of the Tokyo Olympics, still scheduled to take place this summer.

“We’ll get exposed to who these athletes are,” Sawyer said. “We’ll get to know them, and then see them here in Spokane.”