Budapest to host 2023 world championships

Britain’s Ridgeon appointed IAAF’s new chief executive

MONACO, Dec 4, (RTRS): Budapest will host the 2023 athletics world championships, the governing IAAF announced on Tuesday.

The Hungarian capital is the first host city to be named under a new bidding process announced in February last year by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF).

IAAF President Sebastian Coe said after a meeting of the IAAF

Budapest has twice hosted the IAAF world indoor championships and the European athletics championships.

The 2019 world championships will be held in Doha, Qatar, and the 2021 edition in Eugene, Oregon. Meanwhile, former British hurdles record holder Jon Ridgeon has been appointed the IAAF’s new chief executive officer following approval by global governing body’s council on Monday.

The 51-yearold, now a successful businessman, will take up his new role in March 2019.

He succeeds Olivier Gers, who resigned in March, and Nigel Garfitt, who has served as acting CEO.

“His experience in putting together great teams, running large successful companies, delivering

Ridgeon

top class events and bringing strong commercial partners into sport makes him the right choice for this role,” IAAF President Sebastian Coe said in a statement.

Ridgeon won a silver medal in the 110m hurdles at the 1987 world championships and represented Great Britain in the 1988 and 1996 Olympic Games.

As a businessman, he was responsible for transforming British Athletics into the most commercially successful athletics governing body in the world in 1998, the IAAF said. He was also one of the architects of the Diamond League Series.

“Having spent my life in sport, this is a dream job for me and I am absolutely thrilled,” Ridgeon said.

“I have devoted the vast majority of the last 20 years to creating successful commercial partnerships, developing new events that drive participation at both elite and grassroots levels, as well as leading organizations that deliver significant projects across the globe.” met in order to make a recommendation to Council for the reinstatement of RUSAF.”

But the IAAF said it had eased its demand on Russia accepting the WADA-commissioned report by Richard McLaren.

“It is not an easy one, as we would have wanted Russia to clearly acknowledge the McLaren report,” Andersen said.

“But it is difficult not to do that when WADA has done it and we will have to move on and deal with what we think is most important, to get access to the data and the samples. That is what counts when it comes to the athletes.”

The costs of running the task force and dealing with legal appeals by Russia about the suspension are expected to amount to several million dollars.

“I am not surprised, but we had hopes because the federation has done lots of work,” Dmitry Shlyakhtin, President of Russia’s athletics federation, told TASS on hearing of the IAAF ruling.

Russia, whose athletics team was banned from the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, has accepted there was extensive doping in the country, but its authorities have continued to deny any of it was state sponsored and access to the Moscow lab data has not happened.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and WADA have both reinstated Russia.

WADA’s controversial reinstatement in September this year was on the condition that Russia recognize the findings of its report and allow access to RUSADA’s stored samples.

Failure to provide access to the full data from the Moscow lab by Dec 31 could lead to another suspension, WADA has warned.