IAAF World Athletics Final logo (© c)
Gothenburg, Sweden With just over a month to go before the World Athletics Final, planning and promotion for what is being hailed as a “compact World Championships” is going exceptionally well, organisers of the event said on at a press conference in Gothenburg on Tuesday (8).
“We will have many of the world’s best athletes,” said Rolf Schnieder, General Secretary of the 9-10 September event. “It’s really something like a World Championships.”
With 18 of the 24 IAAF World Athletics Tour competitions now concluded, many of the world’s finest athletes have already positioned themselves well for qualification to the two-day finals only competition that will cap the Tour. Just a sampling of the stars expected to compete are Asafa Powell of Jamaica, the co-World record holder in the 100 metres, World and Olympic 400 metre champion Jeremy Wariner of the United States, and China Liu Xiang, the recently-minted World record holder in the 110 metre Hurdles.
Thrilling head-to-head battles among the brightest stars will also be on tap, providing one of the last possibilities of the season to carry bragging rights as the world’s finest into 2007.
“We are demonstrating to the world that Athletics is No. 1 among Olympic sports,” said IAAF Vice President Helmut Digel of Germany, adding that local interest has been extremely high. More than 23,000 tickets have already been sold.
