Nigeria, S/Africa to bid for 2025 World Athletics Championships News

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Nigeria, S/Africa to bid for 2025 World Athletics Championships

By Daily Sports on August 24, 2017

The head of African athletics says one out of Nigeria, South Africa among four other African countries will bid to host the 2025 World Championships.

Africa has never staged the biennial event, which started in 1983, despite being home to many world champions.

Hamad Kalkaba Malboum says he believes a bid is set to come from one of six African nations.

"We are talking with Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco - those countries have the facilities," said the Cameroonian.

People said that Africa could not host the World Cup in football, but we did it very successfully" I have very positive sounds from some of them," added the president of the Confederation of African Athletics (CAA).

Morocco is the only African country to have staged a leg of the Diamond League, the annual athletics series which runs from May to September around the world.

The Moroccan city Casablanca was also the last in Africa to try to stage the World Championships, having bid unsuccessfully for the 2011 event.

Kalkaba pointed to recent successes with March's World Cross Country Championships in Uganda and July's World U18 Championships in Kenya as reasons to be hopeful.

"People said that Africa could not host the World Cup in football, but we did it very successfully," he added in reference to South Africa's staging of the 2010 finals.

Kalkaba, who took charge of the CAA in 2003, said the president of athletics' governing body - the IAAF - backs the idea.

"President Coe is supporting the fact that Africa could host the World Championships," said the 66-year-old, an IAAF vice-president himself.

•Photo shows head, African atheletics, Hamad Kalkaba Malboum.

Source Daily Sports

Posted August 24, 2017