IAAF head Coe hails success of Doha worlds

Source: Xinhua| 2019-10-07 09:46:14|Editor: ZX
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DOHA, Oct. 7 (Xinhua) -- International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) president Sebastian Coe on Sunday hailed the success of the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha.

"For those who follow our sport closely, you will know that we rank our championships on the performances of the athletes," Coe said on the final day of the Doha Worlds. "It is how we, the athletes and the coaches measure our success."

According to Coe, this year's tournament saw six championship records set and 43 countries and regions win medals out of 208 competing teams, including authorized neutral athletes and a refugee team.

There have been 21 area records and 86 national records broken across the ten days of competition.

"The world's athletes have put on the best show in the history of the IAAF World Athletics Championships, according to the competition performance rankings which are used as an objective measure of the quality of international competition," said Coe.

The Briton added, "These performances are incredible, but credit must also go to the facilities and conditions provided by the host country. Doha has created conditions on the field of play and in the warm-up that are unsurpassed."

Doha organizing committee vice president Dahlan Al Hamad said they were "thrilled" when the world championships came to Qatar.

"Our dream started in 1997 when we organized the first meet in this stadium," he said. "After that, we kept hosting many meets until 2000 when we organised the Grand Prix Final. We continued our journey in 2010 when we organised the World Indoor Championships in the nearby Aspire Dome. We also organised the Diamond League meeting here and it was really good."

"We are thrilled we have been able to expand. There are generations here who are hungry to have this kind of sporting event here," he added.

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