London’s bid for the 2029 World Athletics Championships has ended in failure after it lost out to Nairobi, the Kenyan capital becoming the first African city to host the global championships.
At a press conference in Budapest the World Athletics president, Sebastian Coe, said the decision to go to Nairobi was historic and promised that it would stage a “groundbreading championships”.
While eyebrows will also be raised given that 148 elite Kenyan stars are banned by the Athletics Integrity Unit, a World Athletics spokesperson defended the decision, pointing out the Kenyan government had committed $5m annually on anti-doping.
“Kenya is much improved in this area, and we believe Nairobi hosting the world championships can act as a powerful catalyst in the Kenyan government’s continued fight against doping,” the spokesperson said. “It will put a spotlight on clean sport and galvanise the nation behind compliance.”
As Nairobi and Munich, which was awarded the 2031 championships, celebrated, London was left licking its wounds. One senior source in the London team, which had been seen widely as the frontrunner for 2029, told the Guardian they were “totally gutted”.
Only over the weekend did some start to fear that their £45m bid, made up of £35m from the government and £10m from the mayor’s office, might not get over the line. London believed it had a strong case, and the sight of around 60,000 fans watching track and field every night for a week was a compelling proposition.
Jack Buckner, the chief executive of UK Athletics, said: “We are deeply disappointed. We believed we had an outstanding bid which would genuinely take the sport to new levels.
“Although today’s announcement hasn’t gone our way, we will review and regroup. We know the world’s athletes love competing here and we’ll continue to explore further opportunities to make that happen.”
In hindsight, the lengthy public battle with West Ham to get permission to use the stadium in September 2029 – which was settled only on the eve of the bid being submitted – was not ideal. And the sparse crowds on the opening days of the European championships in Birmingham last month perhaps was not the best look, either.
However, many in the London 2029 team are understood to believe those factors were irrelevant and it simply came down to a thirst in World Athletics for Kenya to host the championships, and the size of Nairobi’s bid.
Lord Coe, though, stressed that there had been a range of other factors at play too. “Taking our championships to Africa for the first time will be historic,” he said.
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“Nairobi has presented a compelling and an emotional bid. This is a fast-growing, dynamic, modern metropolis that serves as the economic, cultural, and political hub of East Africa.
“Kenya is one of the great athletics nations. The sport is woven into the fabric of the country. It was important that the World Athletics Championships should come to Africa when we had the right host, the right bid and the right circumstances. Nairobi has demonstrated emphatically that this is their moment.”
It is understood that Munich’s presentation to the World Athletics’ evaluation panel made it the outstanding contender for 2031, and this decision gives Germany added heft as it prepares for a bid for either the 2036 or 2040 Summer Olympics.
“Germany has proved time and again that it is an outstanding and dependable host for major athletics events,” Coe said. “Berlin 2009 remains one of the memorable editions of the world championships, and we have since seen tremendous support for the sport at the European championships in Berlin and Munich.
“The atmosphere in 2022 was exceptional and the attendance figures demonstrated the appetite that exists in the city and across Germany for major events.”