IAAF Council agrees “shorter and sharper” World Indoors format

BeijingDuring a meeting this morning in Beijing, the IAAF Council agreed to change the format of the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Athletics, starting from the next edition in Doha, Qatar in 2010.

Format change proposal, based on feedback from various stakeholders, the general public as well as from EBU, has the goal of making the World Indoor Championships shorter, more impactful and more dynamic.

In particular, the aim is to have two sessions of mainly finals lasting not more than 3 hours in length.

In order to achieve this, the proposal is to review the structure of the three day programme as follows:

Day 1 – one long session to include:
Qualifying Rounds of track events
Qualifying Rounds of field events
Combined Events

Day 2 – two sessions:
Session 1: Combined Events and some remaining qualification rounds of track events
Session 2 (of 3 hours maximum): Finals and semi-finals in 60m track events, finals in field events and the final event in Pentathlon and Heptathlon

Day 3 – one session (of 3 hours maximum) to include:
Semi-finals in 60m events and finals in both track and field events

A working group will report to the IAAF Council in November 2008 with a final proposal regarding the inclusion, format and timing of the victory ceremonies, the inclusion, entry and participation regulations for the Combined Events and a detailed timetable which will set a template for the distribution and order of events within each session.

The Commission is also considering proposals to revise the format of the Long Jump, Triple Jump and Shot Put event Finals aimed at making these events more exciting and reducing their duration. The proposals will be discussed with leading athletes in those events before any revision is finalised.

Council also agreed to continue studying similar strategic changes to the format of the IAAF World Championships in Athletics, the most important competition in the IAAF calendar.

Further discussions will take place with key stakeholders, particularly marketing and television partners, and a proposal from the IAAF Competition Commission will be submitted to the next IAAF Council Meeting in November 2008, with the expectation that the new format competition will be introduced at the 2011 edition of the IAAF World Championships in Daegu, Korea.

IAAF