World Athletics Championships: Doha an interesting choice of venue for showpiece event

State-of-the-art air conditioning systems, late marathon starts, walks finishing in the wee small hours of the morning ... the World Athletics Championships has taken a massive detour from the norm.

The Khalifa International Stadium will be seeing plenty of night-time action.

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Marathon’s starting at midnight, 50km walk events finishing at 3.30am and an air-conditioned outdoor stadium.

Welcome to the bizarre 17th edition of the world athletics championships.

The one question which has been asked ever since the Middle East was awarded the event for the first time back in 2014 is . . . why Doha?

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The Khalifa International Stadium will be seeing plenty of night-time action.

Well, the simple answer is money and lots of it with the gas-rich Gulf monarchy putting plenty on the table to secure the event.

The athletics world titles was seen a key warm-up event ahead of the 2022 World Cup which Qatar was awarded controversially back in 2010.

While the track and field showcase will play out on a far smaller scale, it will be a test run of sorts for organisers regarding transport, venue management and dealing with large volumes of international visitors.

The timing of the championships in late September/early October is unusual for the athletics fraternity but it had to be pushed back because July was too hot.

And that’s saying something.

Athletes flock to the evening training sessions in the build-up to the big event.

Air-conditioning vents blow out cold air into the Khalifa International Stadium.

The mercury still hovers near 40 degrees every day, with the evenings only slightly less but the locals say it’s “mild” compared to the depths of summer.

To compensate Doha has built a revolutionary state-of-the-art cooling system at Khalifa International Stadium.

It is the first time-ever an outdoor stadium has been equipped with an air-conditioning system to negate the treacherous hot conditions that athletes would have otherwise experienced.

The air conditioners throw out a cool wind inside the stadium which will lower the temperature to between 24-26 degrees.

They will negate the effect of the wind from the large AC outlets by blocking them when races are on with the system required to be shut down during the javelin throw competition.

Groundsman make final preparations to the stadium.

This all sounds very impressive but unfortunately not that many people are going to experience it.

The stadium holds 46,000 but organisers have already made the call to cover out the top level with poor ticket sales estimating there may only be 14,000 fans inside for the main sessions.

This isn’t helped by the political unrest in the area with Qatar currently not seeing eye-to-eye with its neighbours.

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt have enforced a boycott of Qatar since June 2017 with their citizens technically banned from travelling to the peninsula state.

The Riyadh-led coalition accuses Qatar of backing extremist groups and Iran, charges it denies -- raising the spectre that politics could partially overshadow the athletics.

Justin Gatlin is back to defend his 100m title.

Nonetheless Saudi will send three athletes, Egypt five, the UAE one, and Bahrain 21 competitors in total.

Australia has sent its second largest world championships team, 60 in total with a lot of debutants given many of the bigger names, particularly in the distance events, have elected to stay at home rather than put themselves at risk because of the conditions.

Given the short turnaround, Doha is being used as the start of many athletes preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics . . . albeit a very strange and sticky one.