IAAF President Delivers Speech on Closing Day of Berlin-2009

IAAF President Delivers Speech on Closing Day of Berlin-2009

 The concluding IAAF / LOC Press Conference of the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics (15 -23 August) was held at the Sub-Media Centre at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin. The guests attending from the IAAF were President Lamine Diack and Communications Director Nick Davies, and from the Local Organising Committee of Berlin 2009 (BOC) were Heinrich Clausen one of the two joint CEOs of BOC, and Media Director Stefan Thies.

 Speech of President Diack:

 Fantastic achievements on the track

“We have all enjoyed a fantastic World Champs which have been notable for confirming the success of athletics at last year’s Olympic Games.

There have been fantastic achievements on the track – and not only Usain Bolt, who may now be the most famous sportsman in the world, not just in athletics – but other World records, Area records and National records.

In summary we gathered 201 territories from all over the world to Berlin 2009:

1984 Athletes – 1086 men and 898 women
3 World records
9 Championship records
8 Area records
57 National records!!!

And after 8 days of competition no fewer than 34 countries have won medals.

What has been special here has been the excellent performances of the German team – motivated by the wonderful sporting atmosphere generated by the Berlin spectators. I would like to say a special thanks to them for their good nature, their enthusiasm but especially their sporting attitude, as they were ready to cheer and applause all the athletes, not only Germans!

IAAF President added that Usain Bolt has established himself as a global sports icon while the case of Caster Semenya could have been treated with more sensitivity, world athletics supremo Lamine Diack said on Sunday. Speaking on the closing day of the Berlin championships, the IAAF president Diack said that the sport had been as successful as at the 2008 Beijing Olympics where Jamaica’s Bolt had burst onto the scene. “We have been living a fantastic championship. All the promises from Beijing have been kept,” the 76-year-old Senegalese said. “Usain Bolt is the most popular sportsman, not just the most popular athlete.” Bolt repeated his Olympic sprint treble in Berlin and set jaw-dropping world records in the 100m (9.58 seconds) and 200m (19.19 sec). The 23-year-old now enjoys pop star status.

On the downside, there was the case of 800m champion Semenya who was told by the IAAF to undergo a gender verification test over concerns about her meteoric rise and boyish looks. “The issue could have been treated with more sensitivity. I admit that we are unhappy, we could have done better,” said Diack. “But this is definitely not a case of racism.” The whole of South Africa rallied behind the athlete, who won the gold a few hours after the IAAF confirmed that the tests had started, with results due within the next weeks. South African athletics boss Leonard Chuene allegedly threatened to resign from the IAAF Council during a stormy meeting Saturday. The IAAF requested the gender test about three weeks ago after Semenya burst onto the scene by improving her personal bests in the 800 and 1,500 by huge margins.

IAAF spokesman Nick Davies says the “extremely complex, difficult” test has been started, but the results were not expected for several weeks.

Davies said “the situation today is that we don’t have any conclusive evidence that she should not be allowed to run.”

Diack praised the overall running of the championships which brought together 1,984 athletes from 201 countries and attracted some 400,000 fans to the Olympic Stadium as the biggest sports event of the year. Diack praised the spread as 34 countries medalled ahead of the concluding eight finals Sunday and 55 countries had athletes in finals.

IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said that 900 of the planned 1,000 doping tests have been conducted. There have been two positive tests so far, involving Nigerian 400 metres hurdles runner Amaka Ogoegbunam and Moroccan steeplechaser Jamal Chatbi.

High TV ratings

 The IAAF is also delighted that the TV ratings for this World Championships have been exceptional and show a rising interest in the sport.

In Germany, we had over 5 million viewers on average and a peak of 9.9 million during the men’s 100m final and of 8.6 million during the women’s High Jump.

 In France we averaged between 3.5 and 4 million, in the UK we had between 2.5 and 3.5 million while in Japan the average ranged between 4 and 5 million.

 The interest in this competition can also be seen in a huge surge of visitors to the IAAF’s own website for these championships. Previously, the record of unique daily users had been 340,000 during the World Champs in Osaka. I am delighted to announce that in Berlin, we had a new record of 1 million unique daily users on two of the days of competition, which is an impressive total, and all days were at least double the daily high of two years ago.

400,000 tickets sold

Special thanks to the Governing Mayor Klaus Wowereit who was absolutely determined to have these World championships in his city. I remember that even though he failed to win the bid to host the 2005 World Champs, he did not give up, but came back again with a new effort. The World Athletics Family can thank him for his determination!

Up until last night, the organisers had sold 400,000 tickets which represents approximately 70% of the total available. Innovations such as having the Opening ceremony, the road races (walk and marathons) outside the stadium as well as creating a “Kulturstadion” by the Brandenburg Gate, were a great success and this helped to create a special atmosphere in the city.

I was also very happy to be able to welcome the relatives of Jesse Owens and Luz Long, and present the medals with them after yesterday’s men’s Long Jump ceremony yesterday. It was a wonderful way to emphasise the human values of our sport – past, present and future.

Finally, Diack thanked the organising team for their hard work and especially the thousands of volunteers who are the backbone of our sport, and special thank you to our partners in the media. The IAAF is delighted to confirm that the IAAF Website’s pages for the nine days of competition of 12th IAAF World Championships, Berlin, Germany (15 – 23 August) received a huge level of traffic, more than doubling the figures received for the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, which were themselves impressive at the time. On 20 Aug of Berlin 2009 (Day 6) the website received 1 Million Unique Users and over 16 million Page Hits, having come close to that seven figure target of Uniques the day before when on 19 Aug (Day 5), 947,000 Unique Users came on to the site, producing nearly 15 Million Page Hits. While not all days reached those two lofty summits, every day in Berlin at least doubled the highest daily figure for the IAAF Website in Osaka 2007 which was on Day 4 (28 Aug 2007) – 320,762 unique users, with page views: 6.5 Million page hits.