Europe 1 with AFP
The Half Marathon World Championships scheduled for November 22, 2022 in Yangzhou, China have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic. Since 2020, no international athletics competition has taken place in China, the two annual meetings of the Diamond League having been canceled.
The Covid-19 continues to disrupt the sports calendar in China. The World Half Marathon Championships, scheduled for November 22, 2022 in Yangzhou in eastern China, have been canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, World Athletics announced on Tuesday.
World Athletics Half Marathon Championships Yangzhou 22 has been canceled and the city will instead host the World Athletics Road Running Championships in March 2027.
—World Athletics (@WorldAthletics) July 5, 2022
“After lengthy discussions with the Local Organizing Committee and the Chinese Athletics Association, the decision not to hold the championships in Yangzhou this year was made by mutual agreement,” the international federation wrote in a statement. . In compensation, the Road Race World Championships, a new event bringing together a 5km and a half-marathon which will take place for the first time in 2023 in Latvia, have been awarded to Yangzhou for the 2027 edition.
Scheduled to host many major events in recent years, China has not hosted any international athletics competition since the start of the pandemic in 2020. The two annual meetings of the Diamond League have already been canceled in 2020 , 2021 and 2022, after the cancellation of the Nanking Indoor Worlds in 2020.