When it comes to the “big four” sports in the U.S., professional hockey consistently ranks last. And yet, interest and excitement in hockey—which, at least for American viewers, still far outpaces track and field—is on the rise, thanks in no small part to the wildfire success of shows like HBO’s Heated Rivalry and Prime Video’s Off Campus, as well as the smutty romance novels on which they’re based.

Heated Rivalry has become a worldwide phenomenon, and Off Campus was renewed for a second season before the first had even premiered. Even before the horny-gay-hockey boom, we’ve been in something of a golden age for sports TV, from Apple’s Ted Lasso to Netflix’s Running Point to the Amazon remake of A League of Their Own. It’s not just that sex sells—there’s a healthy and ample appetite for fictionalized sports drama on the small screen, and burly hockey guys are far from the sole protagonists.

Track and field has its own long history of portrayals in media, but just like the sport itself, we’ve fallen a bit from the 1980s heyday. Classics like Chariots of Fire and Without Limits (or, if you’ve got something against Billy Crudup, Prefontaine) once held a proud place in movie theatres and on VHS shelves, and even more recent efforts like McFarland, USA, or the Jesse Owens biopic Race found niche, but perfectly respectable, success in the mid-2010s.

Heck, track and field even has its own horny gay fantasy: 1982’s Personal Best, a fictional story of the relationship between two women training for the 1980 Olympic Trials. That film was a critical success but underperformed commercially (sounds very appropriate for track and field), but why should its lackluster box office performance stop us from trying to remake it into a direct-to-streaming series 40 years later?

Much like virtually every other aspect of the sport, track and field’s nerdy, old-school fidelity to accuracy at the expense of excitement may be holding us back in the entertainment world. Most of the running films you can think of offhand are biopics steadfastly rooted in faithfully recounting an inspirational, but hardly boundary-pushing, tale. Where are our Rockys? Our Challengerses? At this point, it would even be nice to see a modern remake of 2005’s Fever Pitch where Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney fall in love at Hayward Field instead of Fenway Park.

A great sports movie isn’t about the stats. Even the most diehard of Indiana basketball fans can’t recall the final score of the championship in Hoosiers, and no one is tracking the weekly mileage of the cyclists in Breaking Away. The emotional journeys of the central athletes, the challenges they overcome, and the relationships they forge along the way are all way more important than the minutia of whether or not the main character is doing double thresholds. Track and field’s “passion problem” is sorely in need of a highly-dramatized, fictional shot of adrenaline. And at this point, we very well may need to rely on conventionally-beautiful actors showing gratuitous, albeit tasteful, butt on screen to do it. Beggars can’t be choosers.

So here’s the pitch: two up-and-coming middle-distance runners wrap up their All-American college careers, sign pro contracts with rival shoe brands, and embark on a journey to make a splash on the Diamond League circuit. While they vie for their first U.S. teams, pose for hydration-powder photoshoots, and shuffle in and out of training groups, they find themselves inexplicably drawn to one another. After a season full of sexual-tension-filled glances across call rooms and slow-motion droplets of sweat flying through the air, they find themselves sharing a hotel room at the World Championships and the rest is history.

If there are any up-and-coming romance novelists and/or successful TV screenwriters subscribed to the newsletter, we’re begging you: please put pen to paper. The sport needs you.

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