2013 World Championships in Athletics

Bidding process

When the seeking deadline passed on 1 December 2006, four candidate cities had confirmed their candidatures. These were: Barcelona (Spain), Brisbane (Australia), Moscow (Russia) and Gothenburg (Sweden). The IAAF announced Moscow the winning candidate at the IAAF Council Meeting in Mombasa on 27 March 2007.

Gothenburg backed out already in December, citing lack of financial support from the Swedish government. Barcelona had a record of hosting the 1992 Summer Olympics and the 1995 IAAF World Indoor Championships. It was chosen over Madrid and Valencia, which were at one point outlined as possible candidates. (Barcelona was later selected as the host for the 2010 European Athletics Championships).

Brisbane simultaneously bid for 2011 and 2013 World Championships with the primary focus being on the 2011 event. Queensland Sport and Athletics Centre (ANZ Stadium) was the proposed venue. The venue had hosted the 1982 Commonwealth Games and 2001 Goodwill Games. It was also a failed bidder for the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, which was eventually won by Berlin.

In the case of Moscow, Deputy Mayor Valery Vinogradov announced on 13 March 2006 that the city would bid for the 2011 Championships and suggested Luzhniki Stadium as venue. When the IAAF elected to decide the 2011 and 2013 events at the same meeting, Moscow added its name to the 2013 list. The city had hosted the 1980 Summer Olympics (also at the Luzhniki Stadium) and the 2006 IAAF World Indoor Championships.

Venue

Main venue was Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow with a capacity of 78,360 spectators.

Event summary

The championships featured 3 championship records, 22 world leadings, 2 area records, 48 national records but no world records. In addition to gold medals, individual winners received prize money of $60,000 where as members of winning relay teams received $20,000.

Men

Usain Bolt of Jamaica moved to the top of the all-time World Championships medal table by winning three gold medals. He won the 100 metres, the 200 metres, and Jamaica won the 4x100 metre relay behind a strong anchor leg from Bolt who passed the United States' Justin Gatlin down the stretch. It was Bolt's second three gold performance at the World Championships. After the meet, his career total stood at 8 golds and 2 silvers, narrowly surpassing Carl Lewis' 8 golds, 1 silver, and 1 bronze. Trinidad and Tobago's Jehue Gordon edged America's Michael Tinsley by a hundredth of a second to win the 400 metre hurdles. It was the first gold for Trinidad and Tobago since 1997. Serbia's Emir Bekrić took bronze in national record time. Félix Sánchez, competing for the Dominican Republic, also made the final of the event, marking his seventh consecutive World Championship 400 metre hurdles final.

Great Britain's Mo Farah won the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres to become the second man in history to win both events at both the World Champions and the Olympics. The only man to do it before had been Kenenisa Bekele of Ethiopia. Stephen Kiprotich of Uganda became the first non-Kenyan to win the marathon at the World Championships since 2005. It was also Uganda's first men's title in the history of the event. Kiprotich became only the second man, after Gezahegne Abera, to follow an Olympic marathon gold medal with a world championship marathon gold medal. Ethiopians Lelisa Desisa and Tadese Tola took second and third respectively.

In the high jump, Bohdan Bondarenko set a Championship record of 2.41 (7'10.75") en route to a gold medal in a highly competitive final. Mutaz Essa Barshim of Qatar took second and Derek Drouin set a Canadian national record while winning bronze.

Women

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce became the first woman in World Championships history to sweep the sprint events when anchored Jamaica to gold in the 4x100 metre relay. Jamaica's time of 41.29 set a Championships record. Earlier in the meet, Fraser-Pryce won the 100 metres and the 200 metres. In the final of the 200 metres, Allyson Felix tore her right hamstring. A photo-finish gave Murielle Ahoure of the Ivory Coast the silver over Nigeria's Blessing Okagbare after both finished in the same time.

Great Britain's Christine Ohuruogu won the 400 metres in a national record time of 49.41. She came from behind to edge out defending champion Amantle Montsho of Botswana by 4 thousands of a second in a photo finish. Zuzana Hejnova won gold and set a Czech national record in the 400 metre hurdles. Eunice Sum of Kenya won her first major title, besting Olympic champion Mariya Savinova of Russia in the 800 metres.

Russia's 4 × 400 m relay won the gold medal by defeating the United States by 0.22 seconds. The United States suffered a time-wasting exchange on the final leg.

Russia's Tatyana Lysenko set a World Championships record in the hammer throw en route to the gold. Caterine Ibargüen won Colombia's first ever World Championship gold by finishing first in the triple jump. Christina Obergföll of Germany won her first World Championships title in javelin.

Field

Reference:

Medals

A total of 47 sets of medals were distributed between 38 countries. Russia topped the medal table for the first time since 2001 with seven gold medals won, followed by the United States and Jamaica with six gold medals each. It was the first time since 1987 that the United States did not at least tie for the most gold medals. In the overall medal count, the United States won 25 medals in total, followed by Russia with 17 and Kenya with 12.

Points

The IAAF Placing Table assigns eight points to the first place and so on to the eight finalists (except teams that do not start or are disqualified). 60 IAAF members received points.

   Host.

Participating nations

206 countries (or more accurately, IAAF members) participated with a total of 1974 athletes. The biggest delegation was the one of USA with 137 athletes. The number of athletes sent per nation is show in parentheses.

Reference:

American coverage

In the United States the IAAF sold exclusive rights to Universal Sports, a network associated with NBC Sports. Universal Sports can only be seen in about ten percent of the households in the American market. While NBC provided an hour and a half of coverage on weekend days, Universal Sports limited other distribution of the content, even online content requiring login with cable subscription user names. For those viewers without access to Universal Sports, nationwide coverage of the entire meet was generally limited to six hours of weekend coverage. The IAAF provided short YouTube highlight clips, a fraction of the online coverage they provided from Daegu two years earlier, instead promoting an internet radio feed and Twitter updates.

Controversies

The introduction of a Russia federal law in June banning "homosexual propaganda" affected the championships hosted in Moscow. Western and international bodies had already condemned the move prior to the event, which was scheduled several months prior to the more prominent 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. The IAAF deputy secretary general, Nick Davies, stated that the international nature of the competition might alter the country's perspective, but that the matter of gay rights would not be addressed by the championships, as long as its athletes were unaffected. Russian politician Vitaly Milonov had stated that the law would apply to athletes and tourists in the same way as Russian citizens. He also said those suggesting a boycott of the championships in protest of the laws were merely avoiding their competitors, saying "sports competitions are a place where there can't be any politics".

Several athletes voiced their concerns over the issue of gay rights in Russia, but none boycotted the event. American runner Nick Symmonds, a supporter of the NOH8 Campaign for equal rights, said he would respect the host nation and its laws and would focus on sporting competition only in Moscow. However, he maintained his position as an advocate of gay rights and would silently dedicate his performance "to my gay and lesbian friends back home".

Two Swedish athletes, high jumper Emma Green Tregaro and sprinter Moa Hjelmer, attracted attention when they painted their nails in a rainbow pattern in support of gay rights and displayed the colours during the qualifying rounds. The IAAF notified the Swedish Athletics Federation that this gesture was in breach of rules on athlete conduct. The Swedish officials stood by Green Tregaro, but she relented under the pressure – in the high jump finals, she sported all red nails as a symbol of love. While watching the high jump finals, Paavo Arhinmäki, the Finnish Minister for Culture and Sport, waved a rainbow flag at the arena. Hjelmer had been eliminated in the first round of the 200 metres and did not compete again at the championships.

Russia's Yelena Isinbayeva was a popular winner in the women's pole vault, but later drew controversy for her remarks criticizing Green Tregaro's nails. She said the protests were disrespectful towards the host nation and commented in English: "We consider ourselves like normal, standard people, we just live boys with women, girls with boys...We have our law which everyone has to respect. When we go to different countries, we try to follow their rules." Following the negative reactions from other athletes and Western media she said that she had been misunderstood due to her grasp of English: "What I wanted to say was that people should respect the laws of other countries particularly when they are guests. But let me make it clear I respect the views of my fellow athletes, and let me state in the strongest terms that I am opposed to any discrimination against gay people on the grounds of their sexuality (which is against the Olympic Charter)."

During the medal ceremony for the women's 4×400 metres relay images of Kseniya Ryzhova and Yuliya Gushchina sharing a kiss on the lips spread through social media and were interpreted as a protest against the anti-gay laws. Both Ryzhova and Gushchina denied any intention to make such a protest, rather they were simply happy with their athletic success, and stated that they were married to men. Although reports were principally focused on the pair, all four of the Russia relay runners briefly kissed each other on the podium. Ryzhova described her assumed connection to LGBT as insulting. The Russian Minister for Sport, Vitaly Mutko, said that Western media had over-emphasised the issue, noting that same-sex relations are not illegal in Russia and sparser coverage of the issue in domestic media.

Anti-doping

At the championships the IAAF collected blood samples from all participating athletes, following the procedure introduced at the 2011 World Championships in Athletics, in line with supporting its Athlete Biological Passport programme. This assisted the federation in detecting athlete's potential usage of banned substances, including steroids, human growth hormone, EPO and blood doping. In addition to the mandatory blood tests, the IAAF also conducted around 500 urine tests at the championships in three groups: all medallists were subjected to urine tests, those showing biological passport anomalies were targeted, and random urine tests were also applied. Continuing with procedures initiated at the 2005 edition, all urine tests were scheduled for long-term storage to allow retrospective testing in future. All athlete samples were processed at the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency.

In the months preceding the event around 40 Russian athletes received doping bans. The most prominent of these were Darya Pishchalnikova (discus runner-up at the 2012 Summer Olympics) and Olga Kuzenkova (former Olympic and world champion in the hammer throw). The Russian Athletics Federation president Valentin Balakhnichev defended the bans as proof of the increasing effectiveness of RUSADA (the Russian Anti-Doping Agency) which had been formed three years before.

A month before the competition The Mail on Sunday, a British newspaper, carried out an investigation and published the fact that the head of the Moscow Anti-Doping Laboratory, Grigory Rodchenkov, had been arrested on charges of drug distribution, but the case against him had been dropped. His sister was convicted of purchasing banned drugs with the intention to supply them to athletes. Former Russian coach Oleg Popov and 400 metres runner Valentin Kruglyakov stated that athletes were ordered to dope and paid officials to conceal their positive tests. The coach of the national athletics team, Valentin Maslakov, noted that Kruglyakov had tested positive for drugs and that Popov coached Lada Chernova, who had twice tested positive. He also stated that RUSADA and its labs were independent from the national sports federations.

Outside of Russia, three of the world's top sprinters had positive tests during the buildup: Asafa Powell, Tyson Gay and Veronica Campbell-Brown.

The drug testing results from the competition revealed several athletes had been using performance-enhancing drugs. The fifth-place finisher in the men's javelin, Roman Avramenko of Ukraine, tested positive for 4-Chlorodehydromethyltestosterone (a steroid), as did Turkmenistan's Yelena Ryabova (a competitor in the women's 200 m). Another 200 m runner, Yelyzaveta Bryzgina, also of Ukraine, was banned for the steroid drostanolone. Afghan 100 m runner Masoud Azizi had nandrolone in his sample. Two athletes in the walking events, Ayman Kozhakhmetova and Ebrahim Rahimian, failed their tests for EPO, as did Guatemala's marathon runner Jeremias Saloj.

Athlete desertion

Orlando Ortega, a Cuban athlete who competes in the 110 metres hurdles deserted his national delegation during the championships and did not return to Cuba at its conclusion. Ortega had received a six-month ban from the Cuban Athletics Federation earlier in the season for unspecified disciplinary reasons. Valentin Balakhnichev, the president of the Russian Athletics Federation, stated that he had had no contact from the athlete and in any case the federation was not looking to recruit him.