Doha being awarded World Championships asks questions of IAAF

Criswell always said we should all be interested in the future, because that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives, whether we want to or not. He also made some brilliantly imaginative predictions about the future – full medical attention by vending machines! – most of which proved wildly inaccurate.

That's not saying he wasn't worth listening too. Sadly his 1968 bestseller, Criswell Predicts: From Now to the Year 2000, is no longer relevant, which means most of us have to use our own imagination. And in this business it seems we are spending an increasing amount of time predicting the future of sporting events.

Immediate future

Such as this week’s decision by the IAAF to award to 2019 World Athletics Championships to Doha,

Qatar

, sending them into the Middle East for the first time: lots of people are already predicting what’s going to happen over there in five year’s time, as if there aren’t more immediate future events to worry about, such as next year’s World Athletics Championships in Beijing, or indeed the 2017 Championships, in London.

Tuesday’s vote at the IAAF headquarters in Monaco was certainly close, Doha winning by just three votes (15-12) ahead of Eugene, Oregon, with Barcelona eliminated in the first round. Eugene probably made more sentimental sense – “Track Town USA” and all that – while Barcelona probably made more practical sense, although there’s no denying Doha made more financial sense.

It’s not the first time the IAAF have been lured by what we often dub the filthy lucre, although in fairness, Doha has always been the frontrunner, ever since losing out to London, in the race to stage the 2017 World Championships.

Impressive bid

There’s no denying either that Doha made an impressive bid, offering the complete sporting package – super modern facilities, accommodation, security, etc – even if it’s all fuelled by Qatar’s bottomless pit of oil money. Although it may be desert country, they’re also promising a vast solar powered air conditioning and cooling system throughout the Khalifa International Stadium , plus the world’s first 100 metre digital screen, allowing spectators to watch every event inside the stadium simultaneously.

Nor is Doha a complete stranger to world athletics: it already hosts one of the most successful Diamond League meetings, in early May. What also helped swing the vote in their favour was the presence in Monaco on Tuesday of high jumper Mutaz Essa Barshim, born and bred in Doha, and who at the age of 23 may be the best athlete in the world some of you have never heard of. Barshim jumped 2.43 metres this summer, the second highest in history, and having won Olympic bronze in London 2012, and World Championship silver in 2013, may well be the Usain Bolt of field events by the time 2019 rolls around.

Doha may have a population of just under one million people, and Qatar itself only about 2.1 million, yet the IAAF was also looking beyond the borders. As the Doha presentation pointed out, 60 per cent of the 450 million people living in the Gulf States are under the age of 30, and that’s the untapped athletics audience the IAAF believes it can reach.

Naturally the conditions in Doha won’t be ideal, the oppressive sun and heat a fear for spectators as much as athletes. Scheduling the championships from September 28th to October 6th (and the marathons for the middle of the night) will help, although daytime temperatures are likely to top 38 degrees .

Over the next year or so, Qatar will host world championships in cycling, swimming, squash, boxing, and para-athletics, plus dozens more international events, and that's before we get to Qatar hosting the 2022 World Cup.

Yet despite the enduringly dubious bidding process that won Qatar the 2022 World Cup, what ultimately upsets athletics fans is not that Doha will stage the 2019 World Championships instead of Eugene, or indeed Barcelona, but Qatar’s still shocking mistreatment of workers’ rights, under the “kafala system”, where employers sponsor migrant workers, controlling their visas and passports, often forcing them to work long hours, under treacherous safety conditions.

Some 1,200 work-related deaths have already been linked to the construction of Qatar’s 2022 World Cup facilities, as reported earlier this year by the Indian and Nepalese embassies.

Human rights

That’s not saying the IAAF completely ignored the workers’ rights issue, or somehow approved of the Qatari record on human rights: Doha had already committed to building a new athletes’ village, whether or not they got the World Championships.

But you don’t need to be Criswell to predict that any sporting events awarded to Doha will impact on the future of its migrant workers, possibly even the rest of their short lives, whether they want to or not.