The World Athletics Indoor Championships is a biennial indoor track and field competition. It is organized by the World Athletics and had been inaugurated as the World Indoor Games in the year 1985 in Paris, France. It was subsequently renamed as the IAAF World Indoor Championships in the year 1987. The current name had been adopted along with the change in the name of the sports governing body in the year 2019.The 18th World Athletics Indoor Championships had earlier been scheduled to be held from 13th March to 15th March 2020 in Nanjing, China at the Cube gymnasium located in the Nanjing Youth Olympic Sports Park. The place has been built recently. Its Construction had started in 2017 and has been completed right in time for the event. The track and field and the swimming venues are located in the A Block of the park. To the east is the Yangtze River complex where catering, as well as the hotels, are present and all the security work for the event will be carried out.However, it is important to note that now the event has been postponed till March 2021. The reason behind this is the current 2019–20 coronavirus outbreak. This is going to be the first event that Nanjing is hosting. Cedar is the official mascot for the World Athletics Indoor Championships Nanjing 2021.The World Athletics Indoor Championships have been held every two years except one time when they were held consecutively in the years 2003 and 2004 to facilitate the need for these events to be held in the alternate years to the main World Athletics Championships (outdoors).The events held during the championship have been more or less the same since the start. The 4 x 400 m relay race for men and women had been added to the schedule in the year 1991 with the women's triple jump as an exhibition event.Nanjing had won the bidding process for the Championships. The Delegations from three candidate cities had shown their presentations to the Council, first Nanjing (CHN), followed by Belgrade (SRB) and Toru (POL).The organizers have said that they had received advice from their medical team that the spread of the Coronavirus is at a level that is alarming both within China and outside and it has been advised that no one should be allowed to go ahead with a major gathering that can be postponed for a while.Read More: T20 Womens World Cup: It could be Australia vs India at MCG on Womens Day
The Indoor Athletics World Championships in Nanjing, China, has been postponed for a second time due to the COVID-19 pandemic and is now scheduled to be held in 2023.World Athletic said it made the decision with the organizers "with regret" as a result of the global health situation.The competition was to be held in Nanjing between March 19 and 21 next year.This was indeed a one-year delay, as the event was initially the 2020 Championship and was scheduled to take place from March 13-15.Work is now set for the Cube Gym in Nanjing Youth Olympic Park in 2023, as the Serbian capital, Belgrade has already been named the venue for the 2022 World Indoor Athletics Championships.The main indoor event was one of the first major sporting events to be moved due to the COVID-19 crisis, which originated in China when World Athletics announced the original delay in late January.The fact that it was postponed again after nearly a year clearly demonstrates just how severe the pandemic's impact on the global sport is."We regret that we have agreed with the organizers of the IAAF World Indoor Championships in Nanjing to postpone the event until March 2023," she said.“While we have been coordinating with the Organizing Committee and the Chinese Athletics Association to assess the launch of the tournament over the past few weeks, given the current global situation, there is still a great deal of uncertainty about the status of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first part of 2021.“For the safety of athletes and technical officials, we must give due consideration to the dangers of bringing a large group of people to attend the event in case of a pandemic and fully respect the epidemic prevention policy and its implementation in the host country.“The indoor sports season is within a tight time frame (until the end of March), so the event cannot be extended later in the year.“We would like Nanjing to host our Indoor World Championships due to the extensive planning and preparation they put into this event, so we agreed that they will host the event one year after the World Indoor Championships in Belgrade. In 2022.Despite this postponement, our athletes will continue to have important competitive opportunities available in the first part of 2021 through the Inbound World Tour, which includes 26 meetings spread over 12 countries in Europe and North America."The indoor world tour runs from the end of January until the end of February 2021 and is organized into three different levels of competition: gold, silver, and bronze."Also Read: FIS ALPINE WORLD SKI CHAMPIONSHIPS 2021 IN CORTINA CONFIRMED
