History
The programme of the former IAAF Grand Prix Final competition varied from year to year and the IAAF World Athletics Final introduced a fixed programme of events. The new schedule comprised events which were largely similar to those held at the World Championships in Athletics. The differences were that a 3000 metres race was included at the World Athletics Final, while the 10,000 metres, marathon, combined events (decathlon and heptathlon), race walks and relay races were omitted as these events generally did not feature at IAAF outdoor track and field meetings.
The first three editions of the competition were held in Monaco. However, the competition's stadium in Fontvieille, the Stade Louis II, was not of an adequate size to hold the hammer throw competition. As a result, the men's and women's hammer events were generally held a week earlier than the competition itself, taking place in Szombathely, Hungary at the Stadion Rohonci Út.
This situation was resolved in 2006 by a move to the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion (Mercedes-Benz Arena) in Stuttgart, which had previously held the 1993 World Championships in Athletics, and the 2007 and 2008 editions of the final were also held there. The IAAF World Athletics Final changed to an alternating host city format in 2009, beginning with Thessaloniki, because the 2009 World Championships in Athletics had also been held in Germany that year. However, although the IAAF agreed in 2008 that Rabat, Morocco would be the venue for the 2010 Final, general secretary Pierre Weiss confirmed that the last edition would the 2009 competition as a result of changes in the structure of the one-day outdoor meetings tour.
Over its seven year history, Asafa Powell and Meseret Defar were the most successful male and female athletes: Defar won nine events and Powell won five in total. After Defar, Tatyana Lebedeva and Sanya Richards were the second and third highest earners of the competition. In terms of the 87 nations represented over the history of the World Athletics Final, the United States dominated the performance lists with 56 winners – over twice that of second placed Kenya. Russia, Jamaica, Germany and Ethiopia rounded out the top six nations by performance. This underlined these countries' strength in depth of athletes as—unlike the World Championships—there was no limit on the number of athletes representing a specific nation.
Read more about this topic: IAAF World Athletics Final
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)