With the Paris 2024 Games now in the rearview mirror, Sebastian Coe is looking ahead to the next World Athletics Championships, scheduled for September 2025 (13 to 21) in Tokyo. The president of World Athletics, who is also campaigning to succeed Thomas Bach as head of the IOC, makes no secret of it: he expects a lot. And even a little more. "My expectations are high, he told Kyodo News. I want it to be the best World Championships ever. For me, the Holy Grail, the most important goal, is to have a full stadium. Marketing and promotion around ticket sales are very important. We used the opportunity of the Paris 2024 Games to launch pre-sales, they were a success. We will have to keep our foot on the accelerator until the end, with ambitious, thoughtful and creative marketing. " The Briton recalled that the 2025 World Championships in Tokyo, scheduled at the Olympic stadium (68.000 seats), had been pushed back by several weeks in the international calendar to avoid the intense heat of July and August. They will be the latest in history, after those in Doha in 2019 (September 29 to October 6). " The challenge we all face today is climate change, insisted Sebastian Coe. These championships will always be hot. But at this point, we don't see any reason to change the start times. We've had 15 consecutive months of record temperatures, both on land and in the oceans. This is the world we live in. We should have addressed some of these issues much earlier."
