Surprise on every level. While nothing predicted it, the International Athletics Federation (IAAF) awarded, this Thursday, April 16 in Beijing, where its Council is meeting, the outdoor world championships in 2021 to the American city of Eugene, in Oregon. This decision was not announced. The call for applications had not been officially opened. Amazing.
The IAAF announced the news in a press release sent late in the morning. She explains that her decision is motivated by the “unique strategic opportunity” to organize this biennial competition for the first time in the United States. Since their creation in 1983, the Outdoor Athletics World Championships have never been organized in the United States. Lamine Diack, the president of the IAAF, admitted last month to FrancsJeux that it was a “regret” for him. But the Senegalese leader explained: “In the United States, athletics only interests people at the Games and for the Olympic selections. »
Candidate for the 2019 World Cup, facing Doha and Barcelona, the city of Eugene was beaten by the capital of Qatar last November. The IAAF then noted its lack of hotel infrastructure. Above all, its Council had required the American bid team to be able to present a formal commitment from NBC, the channel holding the rights to the Games, to broadcast the event live in the United States. A piece that the Americans were unable to present to the IAAF.
Since then, things have changed. According to the IAAF press release, the American Athletics Federation (USATF) would have obtained from the Universal group, owner of NBC, the promise of a wide and complete broadcast of the 2021 World Championships. A step forward which would have been considered decisive by the IAAF, to the point of encouraging it to grant the event to Eugene without even launching a call for applications. But the IAAF points out in its press release that such an approach had a precedent, when Osaka, Japan, was awarded the World Championships in 2007.
Eugene is the hometown of the equipment manufacturer Nike, whose world headquarters is located nearby in Beaverton. Every year it hosts a stage of the Diamond League. “I am very satisfied that my colleagues on the Council have understood the enormous opportunity to access a major market, and that they have made a decision which is in line with the global development of our sport,” said Lamine. Dick.
Long absent from the map of major international events, despite their status as the leading athletics power, the United States is making a comeback. They obtained the organization of the World Indoor Championships in 2016, in the city of Portland, capital of the same state of Oregon, in the northwest of the country. They have now also acquired their outdoor version. As a reminder, the world championships will take place in 2015 in Beijing, in 2017 in London then in 2019 in Doha.
