The 2020 European Athletics Championships, due to be held in Paris in late August, were canceled due to the COVID-19 outbreak, organizers said Thursday.
The championship has become the latest major sporting event canceled or postponed by a pandemic with others including the Olympic Games, and the European Championships and Copa America, all of which have been pushed back a year.
The World Athletics Championships
The World Athletics Championships is a tournament organized by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the first 3 tournaments have been held every 4 years, since 1991, the tournament be adjusted and held every 2 years.
The idea of a World Athletics Tournament was rekindled long before its realization in 1983. From 1913, IAAF decided to consider the Olympic arena as the only suitable place to hold the event. This idea was accepted until the 1960s when the desire for an independent track and field became strong among IAAF members.
In 1976, at the IAAF Games held in Puerto Rico, the idea of the world championship athletics tournament independent of the Olympics was adopted.
The two cities racing to host the first world championships in athletics were Stuttgatt, West Germany and Helsinki, Finland. Finally, the IAAF committee decided to hand over the right to host the 1983 world championship to Helsinki, and held at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium.
Prior to the 1983 tournament, two other forerunner tournaments were “piloted” by the IAAF, including the 1976 World Championship – with only a 50-kilometer walk from the 1976 Olympic Games and organized by the IAAF with its “own rules” and the 1980 World Championship – adding two new content for women, 400 m hurdles and 3000 m, both of which were not part of the Olympic competition system at the time. that point.
Over time, the scale and reputation of the tournament increased. In 1983, the tournament gathered nearly 1300 athletes from 154 countries around the world. By the 2003 tournament in Paris, this number had increased to 1907 athletes from 203 countries and broadcast live in 179 countries around the world.