There will be athletics in Baku's prodigious National Stadium, but it will only be the Third League of the European Team Championships, the Super League of which was always due to be held over the same weekend in Cheboksary, Russia.

Speaking to insidethegames, Wirz made it clear that he felt the representation of athletics in Baku, and particularly the opportunity to stage a competition in which home athletes will be involved, was vital to the sport's continuing vitality in Azerbaijan.

But he was non-committal when asked if athletics would figure in the next European Games, to be staged in 2019.

Hansjörg Wirz, who will hand over his Presidency of European Athletics this week, pictured during last year's European Athletics Congress in Baku ©Getty Images

"I cannot say yes and I cannot say no," he replied. "When you have athletics at a championship it should always be advancing the situation for the sport, bringing additional value.

"There needs to be consistency. At the moment we don't have a clear picture of how things are going to be in the future, and how the European Games will sit in the calendar.

"In 2019, the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) Championships will be in Doha, later in the year, so there will be some space in the summer months. But when there is a World Championship earlier in the year, it's another problem. So it's difficult to say yes.

"If you have an event in the same year as the IAAF World Championships, it very much depends what is the planning, what is the situation with the calendar.

"If it's too close to the World Championships it could be difficult. It is something that needs to be discussed by all parties."

Such discussion is certainly something the European Olympic Committees President Pat Hickey will welcome.

Hickey has sought to dismiss fears that the newly-launched European Sports Championship will cut across the operation of the European Games and remains optimistic that athletics and swimming will send its top names to the European Games in 2019, which is due to be awarded to a city in May.

Pat Hickey, President of the European Olympic Committees, in Baku. He is confident the European Games and European Sports Championship can co-exist happily ©Baku 2015

"The EOC will be in dialogue with the European cycling, swimming and athletics Federations to ensure the participation of top-quality athletes for 2019," Hickey told insidethegames at the end of March.

But Wirz certainly displayed ambivalence towards the EOC as he spoke about the circumstances of the European Games, which the EOC launched in December 2012.

"When these European Games were created it was the decision of the European National Olympic Committees," he said. "It wasn't developed together with the sports.

"That's why in Baku this summer it was impossible for us to be there with the top division of the European Team Championships. It would have meant breaching the contract we already had with the European Broadcasting Union.

"But we realised that if the European Games took place without athletics in Azerbaijan, the sport would be dead in that country in future.

"So we were able to give part of our European Team Championships that are not part of the TV contract, which means that home athletes will be able to compete.

Baku's National Stadium, pictured in October and now virtually completed, will host home athletes in the European Games this summer. But there is a question over whether athletics will form a part of future Games ©Getty Images

"What the future will be - it has to be discussed. We will look what can be done.

"What are the conditions? What is the value? What does it mean for other parts of the sport?

"It's the same model as the Olympic Games, where the property of the competition is not in the hands of the individual sports. It's in the hands of the EOC. Sports are going there, but they have the rights.

"But then we have to look at what is the relationship between the sports and the NOCs? What is the situation with the financing of the sports?

"It is very much dependent on what is the planning and what is the situation with the sports calendar. "

Turning to less controversial matters...oh no, as you were, turning to another controversial matter, Wirz spoke out forcibly on the subject of Sebastian Coe's and Sergey Bubka's contest to replace Lamine Diack when the IAAF vote for a new President in August.

Sebastian Coe (left) and Sergey Bubka (right) are rivals to take over the IAAF Presidency when Lamine Diack (centre) retires in August - but another outgoing President, Hansjörg Wirz, warns that neither man can afford to let other personal ambitions affect their concentration ©Getty Images


The 71-year-old, who will himself be replaced by one of three challengers - Svein Arne Hansen of Norway, Jean Gracia of France and Antti Pihlakoski of Finland - at the European Athletics Congress in Bled, Slovenia from April 10 to 12, made it clear he would not speak about either the Briton or the Ukrainian directly.

And brushed aside with a chuckle the invitation simply to indicate which man he would prefer to win.

But the humour drained swiftly out of the conversation as he looked ahead to the impending IAAF contest and insisted that this was a job which could not mix with ambitions of advancement within the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

Bubka, an IOC member, has already stood for the IOC Presidency once, unsuccessfully, at the 2013 IOC Session in Buenos Aires where incumbent Thomas Bach was voted in.

Coe has never explicitly expressed his own wish to occupy that post. Indeed, the double Olympic champion and chairman of London 2012 is not even an IOC member.

And he made all the right noises in December as he launched his manifesto for the forthcoming IAAF Presidential challenge.

"The President of an international federation has to be predicated on one pretty immutable principle - that you do anything and everything to make sure that all decisions are in the best interests of the sport," Coe said.

"You do not represent the IOC in your sport; you represent your sport in the IOC. And that is the way it has to be."

But the IOC Presidency has appeared a likely summit for him to attain ever since he made his first political speech at the Olympic Congress in 1981 on the subject of the future dangers to the Olympic Movement.

If Coe or Bubka are still looking to the far horizon, Wirz suggests they shift their gaze smartish.

"If you want to be lead the IAAF you have to put your full engagement into the job," Wirz said. "If you have other loyalties in other areas it is more difficult for you to do the job that is required.

"You have to fight for your sport. If you are too much involved with other things, it's not the ideal situation to bring leadership to the organisation.

"If you have to leave this work to look after some interests that might be in the future, it is not helpful. The job needs time and engagement.

"The IAAF job requires your full focus."

Wirz agreed with the suggestion that the IAAF Presidency should be a full-time, salaried job, as the European Athletics Presidency is to become from this year onwards.

"Yes," he said. "It requires commitment to the job. You have to have that to bring the organisation forward. You can't have different interests in different directions.

"I am not talking now of marketing."

The IAAF Presidency confers automatic membership of the IOC. But as Wirz points out that that is very different from seeking to become IOC President.

"If you seek that, you have to take a position sometimes, maybe not to speak about something. If you have ambitions for the Presidency of the IOC, then you have to act differently and watch what you say. You can't be fighting for your sport.

"Sooner or later as an ambitious person you have to look ahead, you have to be nice to everybody. You won't fight for your sport if it is going against your own interests.

"Generally I don't think it's possible to lead your federation in a successful manner if you have a side interest which is leading to another top position."

Warming to his argument, he cited the two most recent IAAF Presidents, Diack and the man from whom he took over in 1999, Primo Nebiolo. And indeed the current controversial President of FIFA, Sepp Blatter.

"Primo made it clear he didn't want to be IOC President," Wirz said. "He wanted to be President of an IAAF that would grow stronger and more powerful. Lamine also said it very clearly.

Primo Nebiolo, Lamine Diack's predecessor as IAAF President, pictured in 1993. Hansjörg Wirz said he made it clear he never wanted to be IOC President, but wanted to concentrate on the IAAF ©Getty Images

"Look at Sepp Blatter. He didn't want to become President of the IOC. Sometimes it was good, sometimes it was not so good - but he was fighting for his sport."

Although he will no longer be President by the time the first edition of the European Sports Championship takes place - most likely in the last week of July and the first week of August, or perhaps in the first two weeks of August - Wirz is absolutely ready to fight for this particular incarnation of his sport.

"In the European Sports Championship we are bringing together different sports for the Championship in a different format, so that we organise different championships in the same period of the year," he said.

"The international sports calendar is very full. If we come together we concentrate our interests.

"It is a question of how you create additional awareness and value for your activities.

"In winter sports, the main federations co-ordinated their championships in this way, and this brought them increased recognition from the public.

"We also think that if we co-ordinate our championships we can increase the awareness of the public. A mixture of championships draws together different groups for different sport, and if they are together they can draw new interest for people who are there. You create additional awareness with your joint activity.

"It also gives an additional value in the marketplace.

"In Europe, sport has been developed in a different way to other continents. Championships have been established much earlier than world championships, and they have not necessarily been put together on the Olympic model. That is why the sport in Europe has a chance to develop."

The former Swiss 400 metres hurdles record holder and Olympian is certainly making an arresting final flourish to his Presidential career.

And Wirz has more to say on the subject of the jewel in the European Athletics crown, its main Championships, which shifted under his watch from being a quadrennial to a biennial event in 2012.

"I cannot give the details now. But we have already made some reflections on some important issues concerning the European Championships," he said.

"If you look at the European Championships, they are coming out of nowhere. The progression and qualification to the Championships is not understood as it is in football, for instance.

Nobody can miss the European qualifiers in football - a banner displayed before a group match last October between Hungary and Northern Ireland. The European Athletics Championships do not have such a clear qualifying process. Yet. ©Getty Images

"There everybody sees the qualifying competitions for the European Championships, or the World Cup finals. We don't have such clarity in our sport.

"It is something that must be thought through. Only a few countries, such as Great Britain, hold European trials before our Championships. Often it is a matter of different performances in different places and at different times earning qualification. It is difficult to follow the process.

"We have to reduce the competitions which are counting for qualification. And probably in certain places our standards can be reached through placing, not only performance. This makes the process easier for spectators to follow.

"In some sports - for example fencing - after some competitors have qualified for the Olympics, there are still some places left which can be made through a qualifying tournament.

"Athletics has nothing like this."

Asked to look 16 years into the future of the sport as he arrives at his own 16-year marker, and to predict how it might look, Wirz responds: "Whether there will still be the same interest in our sport in 20 years, I cannot say. We have to think about how we do existing events in the future.

"In ski jumping they changed the way competition worked, because in the society we have now, if you keep doing the same thing again and again, they say it is boring.

"If you look around, there are sports that would not exist any more if they had not changed. Take modern pentathlon, for example, or biathlon.

"You cannot be isolated in your own world."

He sees team competition within Europe - as it used to be in the European Cup, and as it is now in the European Team Championships - as something with "lasting value", adding: "We have to do all we can to keep it attractive and spectacular. So that will go on into the future. The national competition must stay, otherwise we lose a valuable part of our sport."

Wirz is reluctant to accept the kind of thinking that was aired by some IOC members during preliminary discussions of Agenda 2020, hinting that certain athletics events, such as the triple jump and 200m, could be eased out of a Games under pressure to accommodate new events.

"What we have in the Olympics should be the same as the European or World Championships," he said. "You should not have a different programme."

But he is explicit about elements of track and field which he feels have to change. For instance, the long jump.

Great Britain's Greg Rutherford soars towards Olympic long jump gold at the London 2012 Games. But Hansjörg Wirz, has reservations about the event's format ©Getty Images

"It is not good to say: 'I have six jumps, and I only need one of them to be good'," he commented. "Repeating doing the same thing does not make for attractiveness.

"If you do that in today's society, people say it is boring.

"A sprinter cannot say that - he has to be good the first time, or he is out. Each round of competition brings him forward another step.

"In high jump, and pole vault, it is different. There you must make the height, but you also have the tactics of what heights to go for.

"Maybe the long jump needs to produce something in the first two efforts.

"But certainly we need to look at the philosophy of our events."

As he contemplates the end of this particular track, Wirz is reflecting with some satisfaction on having steered European Athletics from being a part-time organisation with an office staff of two into a fully professional organisation which is largely self-financed.

"We are not Government-subsidised, and less than five per cent of our budget comes from the International Association of Athletics Federations, which helps to support our education programme," Wirz said.

"Other areas need more help, but we are strong and have a lot of freedom.

"Society is thinking athletics is just high performance, but that is not the reality.

"Our sport is about sport for life. You start as a child, the first thing you do in sport is run - that is athletics.

"You can practise this sport from a young age until you are more than 100 years old. So what we are giving to society as a service and using that sport for health and wellbeing is tremendous.

"What makes our sport great is that integration.

"But we need to make our sport more attractive and more understandable."

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, covered the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympics as chief feature writer for insidethegames, having covered the previous five summer Games, and four winter Games, for The Independent. He has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, The Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. His latest book Foul Play – the Dark Arts of Cheating in Sport (Bloomsbury £8.99) is available at the insidethegames.biz shop. To follow him on Twitter click here.