International athletics season to run from August to October: World Athletics
May 12, 2020
Quai Antoine [Monaco], May 12 : World Athletics on Tuesday announced the international athletics season, beginning with a Continental Tour Gold event in Finland on August 11 and ending with a Diamond League meeting in China on October 17.
"The first World Athletics Continental Tour Gold meeting of the year, the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland, will be held on 11 August. Eight of the ten Continental Tour Gold meetings originally scheduled for 2020 have been confirmed for this year, although many have been rescheduled to fall between August and October," World Athletics said in a statement.
"The Nairobi meeting, originally planned to open the tour in May, has been rescheduled for 26 September, and the Nanjing and Tokyo meetings are considering dates in September-October, but these have yet to be finalised," the statement added.
The body announced that a total prize money purse of at least USD 200,000 will be offered for each Gold meeting.
Also, the Wanda Diamond League has announced today, its schedule of one-day meetings will begin with the Monaco meeting on 14 August and continue through until mid-October.
The Diamond League organisers have announced that these will be individual meetings and will not include a series point score, so there will be no overall league winners this year and the final in Zurich will not be held.
World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said he is delighted that athletes can now earn prize money and assess their training progress in preparation for next year's Olympic Games.
"As we have worked through the challenges posed by the pandemic and the disruption it has caused to our sport, as well as the wider community, our first priority was the health and safety of our athletes. And the next priority has been to find a way to get our professional athletes back into international competition this year as their incomes rely on this," Coe said in a statement.
"I'm delighted that it now looks like we will be able to offer them a solid international season between August and October where they can earn prize money and assess their training progress in preparation for next year's Olympic Games, although we know this will not be easy for everyone," he added.
Of the World Athletics Series events that were scheduled for 2020, only the World Half Marathon Championships will go ahead this year, on October 17 in Gdynia, Poland.
The World Indoor Championships will be held in Nanjing from March 19 to March 21, 2021, but the World U20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, and the World Race Walking Team Championships in Minsk, Belarus are still being rescheduled.
