IAAF Council Meeting and IAAF / LOC Press Conference summary – Daegu 2011… UPDATED

Daegu, Korea – Following an IAAF Council meeting held this afternoon in the Hotel Inter-Burgo, the closing IAAF / LOC Press Conference of the 13th edition of the IAAF World Championships took place at Daegu stadium ahead of the final session of competition.

IAAF Council

IAAF President Lamine Diack chaired a two-hour meeting of the IAAF Council this afternoon, welcoming all members of both the outgoing and incoming Council, the composition of which was decided at the IAAF Congress in Daegu.

“Our sport has been treated like royalty here in Daegu,” President Diack commented to the Council members. “These have been an excellent World championships.”

President Diack warmly welcomed the new Council but also paid tribute to the members who have either retired or failed to be elected for a further term at the IAAF Congress in Daegu. “Everyone of you that will not be with us in the new Council has given great service to our sport and everyone will be thanked in the appropriate way at either the annual International Athletics Foundation Gala or the IAAF Congress.”

Hersh becomes Senior Vice-President

The Council in accordance with article 6.9 of the Constitution, had to nominate one of the Vice Presidents as Senior Vice-President for the purpose of presiding over the Council in the absence of the President. In this respect Robert Hersh (USA), who polled most votes of the four Vice-Presidents who were elected at Congress, gained the support of Council and has been appointed as Senior Vice-President.

Tarasti and Klappert made Honorary Chairpersons

The President also paid tribute to two other officials retiring from their positions as Chairpersons of IAAF Commissions or Committees, Lauri Tarasti (FIN; Juridical Commission) and Otto Klappert (GER; Cross Country Committee), who respectively will now become Honorary Chairpersons of those same bodies.

Council were also informed of the number of Member Federations and athletes who by the end of Congress and the nine days of competition at these World Championships had officially been accredited in Daegu 2011:

48th IAAF CONGRESS

202 Member Federations in attendance

365 Congress Delegates

IAAF WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS, DAEGU 2011

200 Member Federations

1849 athletes (986 male + 863 female)

1563 team officials

3412 team members

IAAF World Athletics Series Competitions – Bid situation as at 2 September

Following the submission of Letters of Intent, the deadline to receive the Bidding Files was 1 September 2011 with regard to bids to organise the 2014 World Half Marathon, Continental Cup, World Indoor Championships and World Junior Championships, and the 2017 World Championships.

With that deadline passed, the following bidders are still in the race…

IAAF World Half Marathon Championships 2014

Denmark, Copenhagen

Russia, Cheboksary

IAAF Continental Cup 2014

Morocco, Rabat

IAAF World Indoor Championships 2014

Poland, Sopot

IAAF World Junior Championships  2014

Bahamas, Nassau

USA, Eugene

Russia, Kazan

IAAF World Championships 2017

GBR, London

Qatar, Doha

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IAAF / LOC Press Conference

The distinguished guests at the press conference this evening were IAAF President Lamine Diack, Mayor of the City of Daegu and Co-President of the LOC Kim Bum-il, the Vice-President and Secretary General of the LOC Dong-Hoo Moon, and IAAF Deputy General Secretary Nick Davies.

They were then followed onto the platform for the second half of the press conference by three newly crowned World champions, Anna Chicherova (RUS; HJ), David Greene (GBR; 400mH) and Dwight Phillips (USA; LJ).

President Diack in his opening address, confirmed that the decision to come to Korea had clearly been the correct one, with the highlights being the great competitions, plenty of drama and excitement, and a wonderful promotion of the event right around the city.

There had been a wonderful atmosphere in the stadium especially from young Koreans who were experiencing athletics for the first time.

There had been lots of surprises in terms of winners. The “curse of the cover” itself proving that there are plenty of new stars emerging including the Australian hurdler Sally Pearson (100m H) and from Grenada Kirani James (400m), and that he was particularly happy to see other countries like Colombia, Iran, Tunisia etc… joining powers like the USA and Russia on the podium.

Importantly for the IAAF’s fight for a clean sport, Daegu has also witnessed an historic Anti-Doping programme at these championships with the aim to take blood samples from all entrants successfully completed over a 17-day period.

The great atmosphere in the stadium has been one of the strongest aspects of these championships and in line with that the local organisers have today announced very successful spectator attendance figures for the championships(see pdf available under 'Related Content' to the right of this text for under for full details).

Global TV ratings for World Championships are alos looking very encouraging. Although at this stage the IAAF is only in receipt of provisional figures it is worthwhile to highlight some interesting facts.

There has been coverage in over 200 countries worldwide and we expect the volume of coverage to be bigger than ever before. In Korea, the coverage has been much broader and better than ever before. There are 10 times more viewers watching athletics in Korea than there were for the last World Championships that took place in Asia only 4 years ago. For Osaka 2007 we had a cumulative average for the whole 9 day event of 6.6 million viewers, while we had 65 million for only the first 5 days (so not including the 200m final with Bolt).

Elsewhere, after the first 4 days (half way) the Pan-European broadcaster Eurosport (who are showing 100 hours of coverage) were delighted with cumulative audience of 28.6 million, which compared to only 37.6 million viewers for the entire championship period in Osaka.

In Japan, our partner TBS have had cumulative audiences for the first 5 days of 131 million, with peaks of 11.8 million viewers for the 100m final and the final of the Hammer Throw which was won by Koji Murofushi. This compares very favourably with the figures from Osaka where TBS was host broadcaster.

Finally, in France, there was an average of 2.75 million for the 100m final, even though the time difference meant that it was Sunday lunchtime in France. Interestingly, the same event held in Berlin 2 years ago at peak time in the evening attracted fewer viewers, only 2.3 million, and certainly the 200m final, where Christophe Lemaitre won bronze with a new French record, will have attracted even more viewers.

IAAF

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