The world’s governing body of track and field athletics, World Athletics, stated on Wednesday that the 2022 World Athletics Championship in the United States has been rescheduled for July 15-24, 2022, the organization’s press service said in a statement on Wednesday, Trend reports citing TASS.
The 2021 World Athletics Championship was initially scheduled to be held in the US state of Oregon on August 6-15, however, the biannual tournament was suspended following the news on the postponement of the Japan Olympic and Paralympic Games for 2021 in view of the ongoing global spread of the novel coronavirus.
"The World Athletics Championships in Oregon have been rescheduled to 15-24 July in 2022, following the postponement of the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games to 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic," the statement reads.
Yoshiro Mori, the head of the Tokyo-2020 Olympics Local Organizing Committee, announced on March 30 that the Summer Olympic Games in Japan next year will start on July 23 and the Summer Paralympic Games will begin on August 24.
The agreement on the new dates have been reached after a telephone conversation of Mori with President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Thomas Bach on March 30. The new timeframe was backed by the IOC, the Tokyo-2020 Olympics Local Organizing Committee, the municipal authorities of Tokyo and the government of Japan.
"The World Athletics Council approved the new dates this week after extensive discussions with the sport’s stakeholders including organizers of two other major championships due to take place in July-August 2022, the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games and the multisport European Championships in Munich," according to the statement from World Athletics.
The 2020 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo were scheduled to be held between July 24 and August 9, and the 2020 Summer Paralympic Games were planned to be organized between August 25 and September 6. The IOC (International Olympic Committee) and the IPC (the International Paralympic Committee) announced their decision on March 24 to postpone for one year the tournaments in Japan due to the continuous COVID-19 spread.
"The new schedule will prevent a direct conflict between any of these major events and, with careful programming, will ensure athletes can compete in up to three world-class competitions," the statement from World Athletics continued.
"In an extraordinary international season for athletics, all three events will be held across an unprecedented summer of sport," World Athletics press service stated. "The World Championships will begin a unique celebration of the sport, followed by the Commonwealth Games and the European Athletics Championships as part of the European Championships."
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said: "This will be a bonanza for athletics fans around the world."
"They will be treated to six weeks of absolutely first-class athletics," Coe was quoted as saying in the statement as saying. "More than 70 of our Member Federations are part of the Commonwealth and more than 50 of our Member Federations are European so our guiding principle in rescheduling the World Championships was to ensure enough space was created around the centerpiece World Athletics Championship for athletes to choose other major events to compete in."
"We were also very mindful that we did not want to damage the other major championships in 2022, because they are also very important to our sport," Coe continued. "We believe we have found a solution that will allow athletes who are eligible for the other two events to compete in them with the Commonwealth Games Federation planning to stage the athletics program towards the end of their event."
"This will showcase our sport to its best advantage in the circumstances and we will continue collaborating with all competitions on the detailed programming," he added.
COVID-19
In late December 2019, Chinese officials notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, in central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus - named COVID-19 by the WHO - have been reported in every corner of the globe, including Russia.
On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. According to the latest statistics, over 1,470,000 people have been infected worldwide and more than 86,000 deaths have been reported. That said, over 316,000 individuals have recovered from the illness across the globe.