As we are days away from the WMA indoor championships being held in Torun WMACI2019, lets take a look back at the previous championships in Daegu 2017
The figures below are from the WMA website.
The 7th Indoor World Masters Athletics Championships
- Location: Daegu, Korea
- Event Date: 19 – 25, March, 2017
- Competitors: 4.364 competitors
- Competing Countries: 74 countries represented
- Site: Athletics Promotion Center, and Civil Life sports Center. Daegu Auxiliary Athletic Stadium. Cross country at Suseong Family Park.
- Now the largest Indoor entry to date. Daegu’s theme “Come, Run, Enjoy it” and it was enjoyed so much it was considered the best organised WMA championship to date. (Indoors and Outdoors) The WMA competition team working closely with the Daegu LOC officials made these a superb championship to be remembered by all the athletes and officials. A Welcoming Reception and Athletes Party was arranged and again was outstanding and enjoyed by, athletes, officials, dignitaries and the LOC. There were 23 new World records set during the championship. WMA President Stan Perkins gave the championship top billing over all WMA championships. Finally the LOC compiled the most comprehensive competition report as befit Korean tradition and culture. Thank you Daegu Metropolitan City.
Now we all know that these championships were highly inflated and the eventual turn out was much lower than entered, however this was the first indoor championships to have Live Streaming available, I remember tuning around 1am local time to watch the Mens 400m M35 final. As this was a chance for me personally to become World Champion, one that thankfully I was able to achieve in Malaga.
The Torun LOC have confirmed that the entries for this championships is even higher than those in Daegu! brilliant!
As we head in to Torun, I have kept an eye out of course at what everyone else is doing and some of you of course may know that team USA are offering their athletes financial assistance and reward to enable them to compete if they meet certain criteria, one of which is being able to medal. so lets take a look at what the USA are up against. The Daegu Medal table
As surely this should be the target to say of that campaign is worth it?
Torun itself has some great history with hosting major events and I really do believe it will be successful, and although the entry figures of Daegu were perhaps not entirely truthful, the event was still a success with some amazing and great storied being brought back from athletes who competed there.
And as yet again I find myself unable to compete at this indoor championships I hope all the competitors every success and more so that we keep pushing our sport ever further and in to the public eye not just for the age of the competitor but for the performances.
