The concluding IAAF / LOC Press Conference of the 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics (15 -23 August) was held at the Sub-Media Centre at the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin ahead of the Women’s Marathon in the city’s streets and the last evening session of competition in the Olympic Stadium.
The guests attending from the IAAF were President Lamine Diack and Communications Director Nick Davies, and from the Local Organising Committee of Berlin 2009 (BOC) were Heinrich Clausen one of the two joint CEOs of BOC, and Media Director Stefan Thies.
The 12th IAAF World Championships in Athletics saw Bermuda’s Tyrone Smith compete in the Long jump in front of Bermuda Track & Field President Donna Watson and National Coach Gerry Swan.
President Diack said, “We have all enjoyed a fantastic World Champs which have been notable for confirming the success of athletics at last year’s Olympic Games.
There have been fantastic achievements on the track – and not only Usain Bolt, who may now be the most famous sportsman in the world, not just in athletics – but other World records, Area records and National records”.
“In summary we gathered 201 territories from all over the world to Berlin 2009:
1984 Athletes – 1086 men and 898 women
3 World records
9 Championship records
8 Area records
57 National records!!!
And after 8 days of competition no fewer than 34 countries have won medals.
What has been special here has been the excellent performances of the German team – motivated by the wonderful sporting atmosphere generated by the Berlin spectators. I would like to say a special thanks to them for their good nature, their enthusiasm but especially their sporting attitude, as they were ready to cheer and applause all the athletes, not only Germans, continued Diack.
Diack concluded, “The IAAF is also delighted that the TV ratings for this World Championships have been exceptional and show a rising interest in the sport.
In Germany, we had over 5 million viewers on average and a peak of 9.9 million during the men’s 100m final and of 8.6 million during the women’s High Jump.
In France we averaged between 3.5 and 4 million, in the UK we had between 2.5 and 3.5 million while in Japan the average ranged between 4 and 5 million.
The interest in this competition can also be seen in a huge surge of visitors to the IAAF’s own website for these championships. Previously, the record of unique daily users had been 340,000 during the World Champs in Osaka. I am delighted to announce that in Berlin, we had a new record of 1 million unique daily users on two of the days of competition, which is an impressive total, and all days were at least double the daily high of two years ago”.
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