Kenya to Bid for 2023 World Athletics Championships

Kenya will bid to host the 2023 World Athletics Championships
IAAF president Sebastian Coe indicated in London that an African country needs to be considered

Kenya will bid to host the 2023 World Athletics Championships. This was announced in Nairobi earlier this week by Athletics Kenya (AK) Lt Gen Rtd President Jackson Tuwei and Sports Cabinet Secretary Hassan Wario.

Speaking during the function where Kenya team from the 2017 world athletics championships in London were hosted to a breakfast after jetting in on Tuesday morning, the athletics don Mr. Tuwei said, “I am glad that we took position 2 overall after USA. Kenya is among six African countries the world athletics governing body IAAF is considering as one of the potential hosts for the 2023 World Athletics Championships.

IAAF president Sebastian Coe indicated in London that an African country needs to be considered this time and the continental body IAAF gave a list of five potential countries to be considered.” Sports cabinet secretary Dr Hassan Wario praised Kenya and also outlined the government’s plans for sports persons in general.

“After successfully hosting the IAAF World Under-18 Championships in Nairobi July, the world is now talking about us and we will therefore gun for the 2023 World Championships. We are going to host the 2018 CAF CHAN football event in January-February 2018.

This will prepare us for 2023 World Championships. We are also in the process of developing infrastructure as we had promised earlier on and the five stadiums will be a reality soon.”

The International Athletics Associations Federation (IAAF) has earmarked Kenya as a potential host for the 2023 World Athletics Championships.

This was backed by IAAF Vice President who is also the Confederation of Africa Athletics Associations (CAA) president Kalkaba Malboum. Malboum has been quoted recently saying that he felt it was time that the World Championships came to Africa.

He mentioned six countries that have the requisite infrastructure - Kenya, South Africa, Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Nigeria to the world body, as the first step in identifying and opening up the bidding process.

“We have proved that Kenya has what it takes to host international events. The World under-18 championships has opened a window of opportunities in the hosting of events. We will further bid to host the IAAF 2020 and the under-20 World Athletics Championships at the Moi International Sports Centre, Kasarani.” Wario said and added that Kenya will prepare a bid of hosting the event after the Under-20 event which will be held in Tampere, Finland in 2019.

The hosts of the World Athletics Championships have already been selected with Doha, Qatar hosting the next one in 2019 before Eugene, Oregon in the United States of America (USA) in 2021.

During the bidding process for the World Under-18, Athletics Kenya (AK) used the template that successfully hosted the 2010 African Senior Athletics Championships to sell Nairobi as a suitable city to host the global age showpiece with improvements in infrastructure However all eyes are on Athletics Kenya and the ministry of sports to not only deliver these global events, but also to develop sporting infrastructure countrywide.