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The Week in Germany: Sports June 29, 2007 Marathons to Start and Finish at Brandenburg Gate at 2009 Worlds
The marathons and walk events at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics will start and finish at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, its organizers announced recently. This marks the first time in the event's history that these races neither start nor finish in the stadium used for the championships. The organizing committee said that the change was made to get the whole German capital involved in the championships set for August 15- 23, 2009. The race walks (men's 20km and 50km and women's 20km) are to take place on the expansive Unter den Linden boulevard which starts at the Brandenburg Gate. Male and female marathon runners will cover their 42.195-kilometer (26.22-mile) race in four laps, with athletes passing the Victory Column, the Holocaust Memorial, Potsdamer Platz, Alexanderplatz and other famous Berlin sites. All other events at the 12th edition of the championships will take place in Berlin's Olympic Stadium. Originally built for the 1936 Summer Olympics, the Olympiastadion and the buildings on the massive surrounding Olympiaplatz square were largely intact after WWII and served as the UK's Berlin military headquarters until 1994. The Olympiastadion also has a strong soccer tradition and provides the home turf for Hertha BSC of Berlin. It was used for three matches in the 1974 FIFA World Cup and hosted six matches, including the final, in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, for which it was renovated to the tune of 242 million euros ($325 million). The German Cup (DFB-Pokal) final match is moreover held each year at Berlin's Olympiastadion. World athletics championships - known in some parts of the world as "track and field" - are held in youth, junior, indoor and outdoor categories. The 2007 World Championships in Athletics, which falls into the latter category, will be held in Osaka, Japan, from August 24 to September 2, 2007 at Nagai Stadium. Athletes will be hosted during the 2009 outdoor Berlin event in the Hotel Estrel (950 rooms) and Hotel Berlin (650 rooms). Berlin was announced as the winning bidder by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) in December 2004, beating out bids from Split (Croatia), Valencia (Spain), Brisbane (Australia), Brussels (Belgium), Delhi (India), Casablanca (Morocco) and Daegu (South Korea). (TWIG/dpa) Links: |
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