AEGU, South Korea: Doha has formally joined two European cities in bidding for the 2017 World Athletics Championships hosting rights.
Doha Bid Committee Vice-President Dahlan Jumaan Al Hamad presented the first draft to International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) General Secretary Pierre Weiss at the Hotel Inter-Burgo at 11am yesterday.
The other cities to bid for the premier athletics championship are London and Barcelona. They have handed over their files to the IAAF.
Dahlan, who is serving his third term as vice-president in the newly-elected IAAF Council, said, “Doha is a serious bidder. We’ve a long history of organising events in Qatar and the biggest event that we have hosted so far is the 2006 Asian Games, which turned out to be the biggest and most successful continental event at that time.
“The Asian Games have really raised our profile. And after that, we started to look for more big sports meets. As far as the 2017 World Championship bidding is concerned, we know about our competitors present in the bid battle and we are also aware how tough winning the rights to hold the World Championship would be.
“But with the support of the Emir H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani and the Heir Apparent H H Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, we’re staking our claims quite strongly and highly optimistic about bringing the meet to the Arab world for the first time,” said Dahlan.
Soon, the bidding cities would kick off their campaigns for the 16th edition of the popular championship.
This will be followed by inspection by an IAAF team sometime in October. The inspection team will give its assessment report to the IAAF Council and then the winner will be announced in Monaco after the final presentation and discussion on November 11.
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