by Alfonz Juck
Rai Benjamin goes 47.16 ! 2019 Nike Pre Classic, photo by Brian Eder / RunBlogRun
This is the update on One Day Meeting news today! Amazing that we will have a season in 2020!
ONE DAY MEETINGS NEWS
MONACO (MON): The Wanda Diamond League today announced a shortened, provisional calendar for late summer and autumn 2020. The calendar is now due to commence in Monaco (14 August) with meetings in Gateshead (16 August) and Stockholm (23 August) also on the schedule in August. Meetings in Lausanne (2 September), Brussels (4 September), Paris (tbc, 6 September), Rome/Naples (17 September) and Shanghai (19 September) are also on the schedule before the Diamond League concludes with Eugene (4 October), Doha (9 October) and a second Chinese meeting on 17 October which is still to be confirmed. Rabat, London and Zurich have been cancelled while Oslo will be taking the exhibition-style Impossible Games on the original date of 11 June. This provisional calendar will see a number of DL meetings go ahead as one-off, exhibition events, while others will be staged as adapted DL meetings.
MONACO (MON): Six Continental Tour Gold meetings have their dates in 2020 confirmed: Turku (11 August), Szekesfehervar (20 August), Chorzow-Silesia (6 September), Ostrava (8 September), Zagreb (15 September) and Nairobi (26 September). Tokyo and Nanjing are considering new dates in 2020, as is Racers GP in Kingston. The 10th meet of the series FBK Games in Hengelo was cancelled in 2020 and will be back in 2021.
MONACO (MON): World Athletics President Sebastian Coe has praised the cooperative efforts of the meeting organisers to put together a substantial competition season from August to October. “As we have worked through the challenges posed by the pandemic and the disruption it has caused to our sport, as well as the wider community, our first priority was the health and safety of our athletes. And the next priority has been to find a way to get our professional athletes back into international competition this year as their incomes rely on this. I’m delighted that it now looks like we will be able to offer them a solid international season between August and October where they can earn prize money and assess their training progress in preparation for next year’s Olympic Games, although we know this will not be easy for everyone. Inevitably international travel restrictions will affect the ability of some athletes to attend some meetings, but we hope that there will be a wide enough range of meetings available for most elite athletes to access some competition before the end of the year,” he said.
ZURICH (SUI): The rescheduled Diamond League calendar means the Weltklasse in Zurich will not stage this year’s Diamond League final although the event could still take place in a different format, informs organisers. “Of course we very much regret the cancellation of the 24 planned final competitions. However, we are also taking the current exceptional situation as an opportunity to discuss new formats that could be implemented this year,” said co-meeting director Christoph Joho. The Zurich Diamond League will however stage the Diamond League finals in 2021 and 2022. And Eugene originally planned for 2022 will now have the final in 2023.
LONDON (GBR): The London Diamond League on 4-5 July has been cancelled. “We are hugely disappointed to confirm the cancellation of one of the flagship events of the global athletics calendar, but we must place the safety of the entire athletics family at the forefront of every decision we make during these unprecedented times and ensure we are following Government advice,” said UK Athletics CEO Joanna Coates. UK Athletics could lose up to £2 million due to the cancellation of the London Diamond League, informs The Guardian. UK Athletics still plans for Gateshead DL meeting.
