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34 • Touchline • Issue 15
WORLD SPORT
NEWS ROUND UP
London has been confirmed as the host of
the International Paralympic Committee’s
2017 Athletics World Championships,
with the city set to become the first to
stage the IPC’s showpiece event and the
IAAF World Athletics Championships on a
back-to-back basis.
The IPC Championships will be held in July 2017 at London’s
Olympic Stadium, just a month before the same venue plays host
to the IAAF’s World Athletics Championships.
The IPC Athletics World Championships are the largest single-
sport competition for athletes with an impairment, and the
event takes place on a biannual basis. The 2011 edition of the
Championships was held in Christchurch, New Zealand. The
next edition of the event will take place from July 19-28 in
Lyon, France, where nearly 1,300 athletes from 90 countries are
expected to take part. The 2015 Championships are yet to be
allocated.
The Australian Football League (AFL)
has recorded a positive A$30.3 million
(US$31.5 million) swing in its financial
fortunes after posting a net profit of
A$6.7 million for the 2012 financial year.
The Aussie rules league posted a A$23.6
million loss in 2011, its first in a decade,
as it oversaw the introduction of the new Gold Coast and Greater
Western Sydney franchises. However, the AFL’s 2012 profit was
built on record revenue of A$424 million, up 24% on 2011, and a
record operating surplus of A$296 million, up A$62 million.
These figures came as the League’s new broadcast and digital
media deals took hold. In April 2011, the AFL struck a five-year
broadcast rights deal worth A$1.253 billion with Seven, Foxtel
and Telstra that guaranteed live coverage of every game through
to the end of 2016.
Total attendance for the NAB Cup, NAB Challenge, Premiership
season and finals was 7,374,832, down from 7,488,198 in 2011;
while average attendance per game in the Premiership season
was 31,509, down from 34,893.
A new high-profile voice has come out in
favour of Qatar staging the 2022 World
Cup in the winter, with the chairman
of FIFA’s Medical Committee, Michel
D’Hooghe, stating that he is against
holding the tournament in the searing
summer heat of the Middle Eastern
country.
Speaking after a meeting of the Medical Committee in the
Belgian city of Knokke-Heist, D’Hooghe maintained that while
World Cup games and training sessions would be held in climate
conditioned temperatures of 21 degrees Celsius, the thousands
of fans and other officials following the tournament would
be more affected by the heat problem. “Personally, I think it
would be a good thing if we could play this World Cup in better
temperatures than in full summer in Qatar,” said D’Hooghe,
according to the Associated Press.
With summer temperatures topping 45 degrees, concerns have
been voiced at how Qatar will stage the World Cup ever since
the tournament was awarded to the country in December 2010.
UEFA president Michel Platini has been a consistent advocate
of a winter World Cup, repeating this call earlier this month,
but such a switch would face the considerable obstacle of
arranging the tournament around the European club football
calendar. The UEFA chief has previously stated that the length
of time remaining until the 2022 tournament would allow
football stakeholders to reach an agreement on how best to
accommodate a winter World Cup.
D’Hooghe continued: “From a medical point of view, I can say
we are concerned. The problem is of course the life beside
all that. And the problem is much bigger for the other people
surrounding the World Cup. The public that has to move from
city to city and that has to live in temperatures that are very
elevated.”
ENGLAND
QATAR
AUSTRALIA
Khalifa International Stadium, during the final game of the 2009
Emir of Qatar Cup
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