Kobe to stage 2024 World Para Athletics show

Article posted by Coliseum, May 16^th, 2022

Image: Kobe Universiade Memorial Stadium, Waka77, CC0

Kobe (Japan) will host the 2024 World Para Athletics Championships following the cancellation of this year’s event due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it has been confirmed.

It is now scheduled to take place from May 17^th to May 25^th, 2024 at the Kobe Universiade Memorial Stadium in the Kobe Sports Park in what will be an important warm-up event for the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris.

The ‘inside the games’ stated that the World Para Athletics and organizers in the Japanese City announced earlier this year that an understanding had been reached that the competition would not take place in 2022, following a request from the Local Organising Committee (LOC).

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The World Para Athletics Championships, known as the IPC Athletics World Championships prior to 2017, are a biennial Paralympic athletics event organized by the World Para Athletics, a subcommittee of the International Paralympic Committee (IPC).

Bonn (Germany)-based the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) is an international non-profit organization and the global governing body for the Paralympic Movement. The IPC organizes the Paralympic Games and functions as the international federation for nine sports.

The Kobe Universiade Memorial Stadium is a multipurpose stadium in Kobe Sports Park, located in Suma-ku, Kobe, Japan. It is currently used mostly for soccer matches. The stadium holds 36,000 people. It was built in 1985 for the 1985 Summer Universiade.

The ‘inside the games’ further stated that the two organizations entered in discussions to assess the feasibility to postpone the event to 2024 which has now been confirmed.

Paris (France) is due to host the next edition of the World Para Athletics Championships which is due to take place next year between July 8^th and July 17^th.

Nearly 1,300 athletes from 100 countries are expected to compete at the 11^th edition of the World Championships in Kobe, Japan’s seventh largest City.

Commented Christian Holtz, World Para Sports Managing Director, “We have worked closely with the Kobe LOC in order to retain the World Championships within the Paris 2024 Paralympic Games cycle. This is an important milestone for the sport as it will be the first time the competition will be held in Japan, marking an important legacy event from the Tokyo 2020 Games.”

Dubai in United Arab Emirates (UAE) hosted the last edition of the World Championships in 2019 with 43 world records set in nine days of competition.

The first Championships were held in Berlin (Germany) in 1994 and were first held in Asia in 2015 when they were staged in Doha (Qatar).

Remarked Akemi Masuda, Chairperson of the Kobe LOC, “At last, the new dates for the Kobe Para Athletics World Championships have been set. Amazing athletes from all over the world will gather in the international City of Kobe, and at the Kobe Universiade Memorial Stadium. You just might be able to meet athletes who competed at the Tokyo Paralympics, and the soon to be heroes and heroines of the Paris Paralympics, which will follow just three months later.”

Added Masuda, “I hope that the pandemic will soon come to an end, and that athlete, media and spectators from all over the world can come to visit us. I also hope that people from around the world will enjoy specialties like Kobe beef, delicious sweets and the Arima hot springs. For the two years that the Championships are postponed, we will continue to spread the appeal of the inclusive international City of Kobe. I hope you will join us in cheering on the Championships.”

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