World Athletics Championship in Qatar Casts Shadow Over 2022 World Cup
Marathon Runners Wilt as Qatar Warms Up for 2022 World Cup
(Bloomberg) -- An event meant to showcase Qatar’s readiness for the 2022 FIFA World Cup has instead raised questions about its ability to host the world’s biggest sporting event.
Rows of empty seats at the temperature-controlled Khalifa Stadium and operational hiccups drew criticism from foreign visitors attending the first events of the IAAF World Athletics Championships in Doha.
The women’s marathon, which followed Friday’s opening ceremony, got things off to a bad start. Though it began just before midnight, temperatures of 32 degrees Celsius (90 Fahrenheit) and humidity above 70% felled more than a third of competitors.
“Qatar hosting the world’s third-largest sporting event reflects our readiness to host an exceptional World Cup in 2022,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa Al Thani tweeted after the race began.
Not everyone saw it that way.
Few concessions were available to comfort fans who gathered along Doha’s central Corniche road, drenched in sweat, to watch the marathoners race along the Persian Gulf. Even inside the stadium, a dearth of concession counters on opening day meant visitors had to wait in lengthy lines for a cup of water. By Sunday evening, tables with attendants selling only water had appeared.
Readiness
For Kirsi-Marja Salomen, a Finnish fan who said she’d attended athletics events in Beijing and Moscow, Qatar wasn’t really ready.
“We’ve been wondering how they will make it with football?” she said. She was one of more than a half-dozen foreign tourists who recounted headaches at the arena.
The marathon at least demonstrated the wisdom of moving the World Cup from its traditional slot in June and July, when heat drives Doha’s residents indoors or abroad. The World Cup’s opening match is slotted for Nov. 21, 2022 -- when the historical average high is 28 degrees Celsius, according to AccuWeather.
The city’s relative inexperience at packing sporting arenas may also be less of a worry with the World Cup, when FIFA typically takes the lead in stadium management to create the most profitable environment for sponsors including Coca-Cola and Adidas. The IAAF championship is also organized through a different government-backed committee than the one overseeing the World Cup.
Lackluster Attendance
The local organizing committee described attendance during the first two days as “solid,” at 70% and 67%, but acknowledged that it dipped on Sunday due in part to it being a work day. Concession shortcomings were “minor” and all matters were resolved “swiftly,” a spokesman for the committee said in response to questions from Bloomberg. A spokesman for the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, which is handling the World Cup, declined to comment.
“It was the same in South Korea, where athletics isn’t known,” Salomen said, with a wave at a half-empty stadium just hours ahead of women’s 100m final on Sunday.
“This isn’t promoting the sport,” Genna Urquhart, a fan from Liverpool, England, said of the lackluster attendance.
Urquhart worried about how the conservative country might handle the rowdy nature of a World Cup. “We need to understand that this is their country and their event, but they need to remember that the World Cup is an event for the entire world.”
The soccer tournament will test the rigidity of Qatar’s basic tenets. Malls feature signs warning women not to wear tank tops or shorts, while public drunkenness isn’t tolerated and homosexuality is illegal.
Pledging Tolerance
Qatari World Cup Chief Executive Nasser al-Khater last week told reporters that organizers were seeking ways to lower the price of alcohol, currently only accessible to visiting non-Muslims at five-star hotels or to residents with their employers’ permission. The Qatari committee has pledged tolerance for other cultures, sexual orientations and religions.
Qatar also faces questions about how it will permit Israelis -- currently not on a list of states whose citizens are eligible for a tourist visa -- to enter the country for the event, a FIFA contingency.
Still, there’s little concern that stadium and infrastructure construction will occur on time. Representatives for the Supreme Committee expect Qatar’s arenas and much of its metro system to be completed by the end of 2020.
Rehema Awuor, a Kenyan who lives in Doha and turned out to support her country’s athletes, said she thinks organizers will be ready: “They still have time.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Simone Foxman in Doha at sfoxman4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Claudia Maedler at cmaedler@bloomberg.net
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