Athletics Australia ready to bid for 2025 world championships

Athletics Australia are ready to bid for the 2025 world track and field championships after being encouraged by World Athletics.

Sydney’s ANZ Stadium is a potential venue for the world athletics championships

Athletics Australia are ready to bid for the 2025 world track and field championships after being encouraged to chase one of the biggest sporting events on the planet by the international governing body.

AA chief executive Darren Gocher confirmed initial talks had been held with World Athletics, formerly known as the IAAF, and approaches had been made to state governments to gauge their interest in hosting the world’s best athletes.

A decision is expected to be made at some point in 2022, but Gocher believes Australia stands a decent chance of securing the rights to host an event that would bring the cream of world athletics to these shores, generating the sort of global interest in the sport that was created when Sydney held the 2000 Olympics.

“I think it would be a massive coup of the sport, for athletics and for the economy,” Gocher said.

“You look at London 2017 for the world champs and para world champs and they filled the stadium for 10 nights.

“It is the pinnacle of the sport. We have never had a wold track and field championships here. We have the world cross country championships in 2022, but that is the first world championship we have had here since the world juniors in 1996.

“We have never had a senior world champs. I think it would be a massive coup if we can pull it off.”

Gocher confirmed initial talks had been held with selected governments officials and all states were likely to be approached about their interest in hosting the event.

State government funding will be crucial to any bid and there are logical destinations in at least four states.

Queensland is bidding for the 2032 Olympics and the 2025 world championships would provide a lead-in to the Games. Victoria clams to be the sporting capital of the world, NSW has outlined plans to chase 10 worlds cups in 10 years, and Western Australia spent more than $1 billion on Optus Stadium.

“There is a bidding process,” Gocher said. “It will depend on who else we are going up against. There is a desire from World Athletics for us to at least make a bid.

“That would be 18 months or so from now so we have time to build up a proposal. It is some time in 2022. The economic impact would be huge, the broadcast — it is a sport that touches 190-odd countries that compete at the Olympics in athletics.

“A lot of it will come down to the funding we can get from state governments and the partnerships we can build.

“We have started talking to some. We will talk to the lot of them. It would be massive.”

The venues for the next two world athletics championships have been decided: the 2022 championships, delayed by a year to avoid any clash with the rearranged Olympics, will be held in the city of Eugene in the US state of Oregon; the 2023 event will be in Budapest.

Athletics Australia continued their build-up to the Tokyo this week by strengthening their support staff, enlisting world and Olympic champions Sally Pearson and Leisel Jones to help get the team in the right shape to contend for medals.

Pearson will act as a mentor and high-performance adviser for Australian athletes while Jones, who is studying psychology, will take up a position as athlete wellbeing and engagement co-ordinator.