World Athletics postpones World Relays scheduled for 2023 in China due to ongoing pandemic

World Athletics Championships Oregon22 - Day Ten
World Athletics Championships Oregon22 - Day Ten

World Athletics has postponed two global competitions in China in the last 60 days due to the ongoing pandemic, hinting that it will be a challenging task for the Asian sporting giant to conduct the postponed Asian Games 2022 in 2023.

On Monday, the world governing body of athletics postponed the 2023 World Relays scheduled to be held on May 13 and 14 in Guangzhou until 2025, World Athletics said in a statement.

The rescheduling of the World Relays has forced World Athletics to tweak the relay qualification system for the 2023 World Athletics Championships to be held in Budapest.

“It is regrettable when we have to postpone World Relays,” Sebastian Coe, president of World Athletics, said. “I want to thank our colleagues at the Chinese Athletics Association for their efforts in resolving this situation and look forward to 2025 when our hosts will be able to stage a spectacular World Athletics Relays.”

Top 8 teams from WAC 2022 to get automatic berth for 2023 WAC

World Athletics U20 Championships
World Athletics U20 Championships

Due to the postponement of the 2023 World Relays, the World Athletics Competition Commission has revised the qualification system for next years’ World Athletics Championships.

The top eight teams at the 2022 Eugene World Athletics Championships will get an automatic berth for the 2023 World Athletics Championships. The remaining eight slots will be filled by the global ranking system. July 30 is the deadline to qualify for the World Relays.

In a press release, World Athletics said the results of the relay races will be valid only on the conditions that they are part of the competition stages in compliance with World Athletics rules and at least two different international teams representing two different nations competing in the race.

Earlier in September, the World Athletics Council postponed the World Athletics Indoor Championships scheduled to be held in Nanjing from March 17 to 19 until 2025 due to ongoing pandemic conditions. The World Athletics Indoor Championships were originally scheduled to be held in China in 2020, but were postponed to 2021 and then to March 2023 due to the pandemic.

The 2024 World Indoor Championships have been allotted to Glasgow.

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