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The 2015 Beijing IAAF World Track and Field Championships run from the August 22nd to August 30th in the Bird’s Nest Stadium, built specifically for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
The world championships is the largest track meet and rivals the track portion of the Olympic Games for level and size of competition. Athletics Illustrated will provide some pre-meet, pre-event editorial content, visit the site often, or follow on social media for updates:
Beijing will be the 15th edition of the world championships, which started 1976 in Malmo, Sweden and four years later took place in Sittart, Netherlands under a different format and was considered official with the 1983 Helsinki, Finland meet. It was originally run every four years like the Olympics; however, has now moved to every-other-year after the 1991 Tokyo, Japan meet. Two years later Stuttgart, Germany hosted the first of the biennial editions. The most recent championships in 2013 were held in Moscow, Russia.
The men’s marathon kicks off the games on day one. The women’s marathon takes place on the final day of competition, although the women’s marathon does not close out the games as there is an afternoon schedule of competition, which will include men’s high jump, women’s 5,000-metre, women’s Javelin, men’s 1500-metre and women’s and men’s 4 x 400-metre relays as the final events.
Currently at least 59 nations are fielding teams, however, many more will be officially added once the individual national championships have taken place and team member have been selected based on the IAAF or individual national sport organisations qualification standards have successfully been met.
There will be at least 47 events with a greater number of competitions with some events having several rounds of qualifying towards a final. The men have one extra event with the 50K Race-walk in addition to the 20K race. The women will just have the 20K Race-walk.
The Decathlon is a 10 event multi-discipline competition, while the women’s version is the Heptathlon, which includes seven events, which include the 100-metres hurdles, High jump, Shot put, 200-metres, Long jump, Javelin throw and 800-metres. The Decathlon includes the 100-metres, Long jump, Shot put, High jump, 400-metres, 110-metres hurdles, Discus throw, Pole vault, Javelin throw and 1500 metres.
The top three medal earners from the 2013 Moscow Games were Russia with seven gold and a total of 17 medals, while the US was second with six gold and 25 total medals and Jamaican with six gold and a total of nine medals.
Broadcast will be available at times by NBC and live video streaming by Universal Sports for most events.
Athletics Illustrated will provide some editorial content and pre-meet information, however, the official site for the championships link is located here.
