View of potential main track at 2020 Toronto.
Ontario meet maven
Doug “Shaggy” Smith said Tuesday on Facebook that Tampere, Finland, has dropped out of the running to host the 2020 WMA outdoor worlds. “That leaves Gothenburg, Sweden, and Toronto in a one-ballot vote in Perth on Sunday, October 30th,” Doug says. I haven’t confirmed the Finnish finish yet, but I trust Doug on this. At the start of the year,
four cities were potential bidders (including Bogotá, Colombia). The
Toronto 2020 site (which can be read in dozens of languages, including Esperanto) is a model bid site. For example, it posts
technical details on the main stadium at University of Toronto. The
Swedish 2020 bid site is basically a PDF and is scarcely more than a tourism brochure. But at the Perth General Assembly, European delegates will outnumber North/South Americans and Oceania reps. So it could still go to
Gothenburg (aka Göteborg). Doug is playing nice. He writes: “2022 is the 45th anniversary of the 2nd World Championships that were held in Gothenburg. Seems fitting that they get that one :-)” Since 2018 worlds
will be in Spain, it only seems fair that another hemisphere get 2020.
Here’s info from the Gothenburg 2020 bid site, which isn’t easy to find.
7 Responses
Dozens of languages…, automatic translations full of ununderstandable sentences 😉
What about World Indoors in 2019? Has a site been chosen? Did I miss something? The deadline for submitting applications for that meet was Sept. 1, 2015. If a site hasn’t been selected, do we know who has bid?
Wednesday morning, WMA President Stan Perkins, responding to my query, sent me this note:
Hello Ken
Doug has jumped the gun again!
We have not been officially advised that Tampere has withdrawn its bid, but we are aware of rumours that the Tampere bidders are interested in bidding for the 2021 EMA Stadia Championships rather than the WMA 2020 Stadia Championships. But I emphasise we have received no official notification.
WMA has now communicated with Mr. Vesa Lappalainen, CEO of the Finnish Masters Athletics organisation, asking for the current status of the bid and we await a response.
I can confirm that when the WMA Bid Inspection team visited Tampere earlier this year, there were a number of matters that required further work by the LOC including the location of an acceptable cross country course, the finalising of the road running course, the confirmed plans for the upgrading of one of the competition venues and maps of the road race walk course. There were some other matters also that combined meant that the LOC had considerable administrative challenges to meet before their bid could proceed.
However we will wait to see what information is forthcoming from the Finnish Masters before making any official comment. If there has been a decision to withdraw we will advise you.
My best regards
Stan Perkins
Weia, Google just translates the words….you have to figure out how they fit together to make sense 🙂
Stephen, I had heard that Poland was the only country to submit a bid for the 2019 World Indoors, a rumor from one of my European friends. Not sure if a vote is needed if there is only one bidder and they have the required facilities to host the event.
I’d also heard a rumour that Torun, in Poland, was bidding for the 2019 Indoors. Hosted the 2015 European Masters Indoors. Great little city, superb stadium.
Torun 2015 was excellent.
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