Doha to stage 2019 World Championships

Barshim Mutaz Essa, of Qatar, competes in the men's high jump during the IAAF Diamond League Grand Prix competition on Randall's Island, Saturday, June 14, 2014, in New York. Essa placed second. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

Doha was chosen yesterday to host the 2019 World Athletics Championships as Qatar’s latest triumph thrust the Middle East nation, with its massive wealth and boundless ambition to be a sporting super-power, once more back into the spotlight.

Less than a week after the controversy over Qatar’s selection to stage football’s World Cup in 2022 was reignited, the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) was not put off by potential criticism as it voted for the Qatari capital to stage another of global sport’s showpiece events.

At its meeting in Monaco, the IAAF Council plumped for Doha ahead of two powerful, older school candidates, former Olympic hosts Barcelona and Eugene, the Nike-backed home of athletics in the United States.

Doha’s victory, after losing to London in the 2017 bidding race, again underlined the ever-growing pulling power of Qatar’s petrodollar-fuelled masterplan to be a major, credible force in the sporting mainstream.

First, the World Cup, now the world championships but it is still, many sporting power brokers believe, only the launch pad for Qatar to become the first Middle East nation to stage the Olympics in 2024.

Organisers were at pains throughout the bidding process to try to avoid the possibility of a repeat of any of the corruption allegations and logistical controversies which disfigured Qatar’s football World Cup bid.

After an investigation, Fifa last week cleared Qatar of wrongdoing regarding its 2022 bid, only to unleash a new firestorm of criticism when the chief investigator disowned the conclusions of the governing body’s report.

Also trying to avoid the sort of uproar which has enveloped Fifa since it chose to host its event in the burning mid-summer heat, Doha organisers recognised their athletics championships, usually held in August, would have to be held out-of-season to avoid the most merciless and potentially debilitating temperatures.

With the championships beginning late September, it will be by far the latest time of year that any of the 17 editions will have been held.

The previous latest was the 1987 Rome Championships, which began on Aug. 28. — Reuters