On September 1, 2024, Fribourg made athletics history. The first-ever Fribourg Track Lab took place at the Saint Leonhard University Stadium, not a standard athletics competition but a laboratory for the future of the sport. The initiative was led by the Canton of Fribourg and TEAMMATE, and was endorsed by World Athletics, European Athletics, and the Wanda Diamond League.
Designed and produced by TEAMMATE, Track Lab was built around a clear ambition: to create a new kind of athletics meeting that puts teams and technology at its centre rather than individual performance rankings. Six teams, each captained by an international athlete, competed across eight disciplines under a format designed to maximise spectator engagement and test new competition rules in a live environment.
Innovations included the elimination of the established 0.100-second reaction time threshold for false starts, new technology to measure actual heights and distances in pole vault and long jump, and the staging of a mile steeplechase as a new discipline. World-class athletes including Alison Dos Santos, Anderson Peters, Audrey Werro, Angelica Moser and Nadine Visser took part, with the event broadcast live on YouTube and covered by the European Broadcasting Union.
TEAMMATE’s contribution spanned all three pillars. At the thinking stage, it conceived the Track Lab format and the philosophy of making athletics a team sport experience. At the building stage, it led the full event production, athlete relations and technical delivery. At the growing stage, it secured the institutional endorsements of World Athletics, European Athletics and the Diamond League, and distributed the event to a global audience through broadcast and digital channels.