Glitches mar Daegu Worlds

Event organizers lacking experience and preparation


DAEGU -- Before opening of the Daegu Worlds Championships in Athletics, the organizer said they were ready and confident to host the world’s biggest track and field event.

But after six days of the nine-day competition, there have been more complaints than praise, and the local organizing committee is already under fire for its poor operations, including glitches in race operations.

Notably, on the first day in the women’s marathon race, the start was delayed following a couple of mistakes from the organizers.

“We could’ve avoided a lot of small problems if we had a handful of experienced people,” said Thies.

The German official, who directed the media team for the Berlin Worlds two years ago, has been working as a supervisor for the LOC since January.

But he noted that the lack of experience of the Daegu Organizing Committee is one the keys to the problem.

Although Daegu had previously shared some of the hosting duties of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the Worlds Championships in Athletics is a completely different thing, Thies said.

“The World Championships is much more complicated than football games. For broadcast for example, for football you put around 24 cameras, but here you have hundreds of cameras.

To organize the one of the biggest track and field events Daegu and the LOC have employed civil servants and volunteers, but most of them have no relation to the sport.

One of the biggest problems, he said, is the misconceptions of athletics competition.

“People here need to understand the World Championships belongs to the IAAF and Daegu is privileged to host this event, which means it should meet the international standard, not the Korean standard,” he said.

Apart from the lack of preparations, a few hiccups from the world’s leading athletes, including Usain Bolt, making for a disappointing competition. On Day 1 reigning world pole vault champions Steve Hooker exited without completing a successful jump and the next day Bolt, the world’s fastest man, was disqualified from the 100m final. The misfortune continued on day three as Cuba’s Dayron Robles was stripped of the gold in the men’s 110m hurdles. Women’s pole vault great Yelena Isinbayeva also suffered a humiliating early elimination in the final on Tuesday.

Korea could also be the few host countries to fail to win a medal at the championships despite hosting. Regarding its current level, the Korean national team set its goal of “10-10,” trying to place athletes in the top 10 in at least 10 disciplines. But even that rather modest goal seems a difficult task for Korea, as so far the top result is Kim Hyun-sub finishing sixth in the men’s 20 kilometers race walk.

By Oh Kyu-wook (596story@hearaldm.com)