World Championships as Drawing Card: 56,000 spectators

The first ever World Championships in Helsinki whetted the appetite for live athletics. 56,000 fans poured into the Olympic Stadium on August 17 to experience at first hand the post-Olympic ISTAF. A veritable flood of World champions made their appearance in Berlin, above all Carl Lewis who improved his ISTAF record of the previous year by a hundredth-of-a-second to run 10.07, easing down across the line.