London to bid to stage 2017 world championships

March 14, 2011

London will bid to host the world athletics championships in 2017, UK Athletics announced.

"The World Athletics Championships is the greatest sporting event never staged in the UK and we're committed to changing that," UKA Chairman Ed Warner said in a statement.

"Athletics is a hugely popular sport in this country and I’m confident we can stage an outstanding Championships in front of a sell-out, knowledgeable crowd.

"Athletics is a truly global sport with more than 200 countries competing in the World Championships. London is a perfect partner for this event with 270 nations represented by its seven million citizens. Every athlete from every country will be supported.

“We are a leading host for major sporting events and we have the experience and expertise to deliver a World Athletics Championships that will make the IAAF proud.”

No venue was mentioned but the Olympic stadium in east London, which will stage the athletics competition at next year's Games, is the obvious choice.

London Premier League club West Ham United is committed to providing an athletics legacy by keeping the track when it moves to the stadium after the Games.

A formal bid must be submitted to the International Association of Athletics Federations by September 1.

London was awarded the 2012 Olympics ahead of Paris in Singapore in 2005 despite the embarrassment of relinquishing the world athletics championships it had been due to stage in the same year.

A decision by the British government four years earlier that the Picketts Lock stadium was too expensive was widely criticised at the time as an embarrassment for the United Kingdom and a blow to its hopes of ever staging major international sports events.

Among the critics was the head of the London 2012 organising committee, Sebastian Coe, who headed the capital's successful bid team in Singapore.

"People abroad must be looking at us with incredulity and if I was sitting on the IAAF committee I'd genuinely wonder if we in Britain were capable of operating a whelk stall," Coe told the BBC at the time.

There was further controversy this year when Premier League Tottenham Hotspur said it would remove the athletics track if it won the right to move into the Olympic stadium ahead of West Ham, even though the London bid team had promised an athletics legacy after the Games.

IAAF president Lamine Diack described the proposition as "outrageous" and said the legacy promise had been a core policy of London's bid.

London is the first city to say it is bidding for the 2017 championships and UKA said the event had the potential to bring an economic boost to the city of 100 million pounds ($160.4 million).

"Athletics is a truly global sport with more than 200 countries competing in the world championships. London is a perfect partner for this event with 270 nations represented by its seven million citizens. Every athlete from every country will be supported," Warner said.