The Athletics Federation of India (AFI) would require a “couple of more days” to determine whether to make a formal application to host the World Athletics Championships in 2027, according to Adille Sumariwalla, the AFI’s president.
World Athletics organizes the World Athletics Championships, a biennial athletics tournament. Along with the Olympic Games, these are the world’s highest-level championships for senior international outdoor track and field athletics competitions, including marathon running and race walking.
While the most recent World Championships were held in Budapest, Hungary, the next championships will be hosted in Japan in 2025, with India putting in a formal proposal to host the event.
”We have not made a formal bid,” Sumariwalla told PTI during an event organized by the AFI and the World Athletics (WA).
”We are discussing that internally and in the next couple of days, we will finalize that,” Sumariwalla added.
With India also preparing to make a formal bid to host the 2036 Olympics, WA president and International Olympic Committee (IOC) member, Sebastian Coe, said he would love to see the Games coming to India. ”I would love to see the Olympic Games coming to India,” Coe told PTI.
”For very obvious reasons, partly personal and partly familiar reasons but India is an amazing country and I think the development of the games would be fantastic. I think everybody recognizes that. But that is for the International Olympic Committee to decide,” he said.
Coe told the media that India is critical for athletics growth and that the nation should host world competitions.
”It is very important that the countries that have the ability, the economics, the political will, and the sporting passion to stage events. You would be surprised, as the president of World Athletics, if I did not want to stage one of the events,” he said.
”I am not here to sell other sports, I am here to promote athletics and I also want to see India stage as many of our events as possible. This is important for us. You have one of the largest populations in the world and you have a very strong economy,” said Coe.
”You have a population whose mean age is 28. Some extremely popular assets come together (which) the world sports look at. This is a place that is very important not just personally but for the development of athletics too,” Coe said.
