Nairobi to host Continental Tour on September 26

The Nairobi meeting of the World Athletics Continental Tour Gold will be held in September 26, over four months later than it was originally planned according to rescheduled dates published on Tuesday.

The Kenyan capital was set to host the inaugural event in May but that calendar was ripped up by the coronavirus pandemic with the changes setting up Finland’s Turku as host city for the opening leg on August 11.

The World Indoor Championships will be held in Nanjing, 19-21 March, 2021, but the World U20 Championships in Nairobi, Kenya, and the World Race Walking Team Championships in Minsk, Belarus are still being rescheduled.

While a few minor events will be staged in July, the season is likely to resume only in August after the National Championships window, World Athletics said in the statement.

The Diamond League was forced to cancel events in London, Zurich and Rabat due to the COVID-19 pandemic and announced a new calendar on Tuesday with the first event provisionally set for Monaco in August.

Those would be followed by meetings in 10 more cities.

“Our first priority was the health and safety of our athletes. The next priority was to find a way to get our professional athletes back into international competition this year as their incomes rely on this,” World Athletics President Sebastian Coe said.

“I’m delighted that it now looks like we will be able to offer them a solid international season… where they can earn prize money and assess their training progress in preparation for next year’s Olympic Games.”

Eight of this year’s 10 Continental Tour Gold meetings have been confirmed, with many rescheduled to take place between August and October.

Some Continental Silver and Bronze meetings will be staged as domestic competitions beginning with the Josefa Odlozila Memorial event in Prague on June 8.

“International travel restrictions will affect the ability of some athletes to attend some meetings, but we hope that there will be a wide enough range of meetings available for most elite athletes to access some competition before the end of the year,” Coe added.

2020 international competition calendar:

August
11 Turku – Continental Tour Gold
14 Monaco – Wanda Diamond League
16 Gateshead – Wanda Diamond League
20 Szekesfehervar – Continental Tour Gold
23 Stockholm – Wanda Diamond League

September
2 Lausanne – Wanda Diamond League
4 Brussels – Wanda Diamond League
6 Paris (tbc) – Wanda Diamond League
6 Silesia – Continental Tour Gold
8 Ostrava – Continental Tour Gold
15 Zagreb – Continental Tour Gold
17 Rome/Naples – Wanda Diamond League
19 Shanghai – Wanda Diamond League
26 Nairobi – Continental Tour Gold

October
4 Eugene – Wanda Diamond League
9 Doha – Wanda Diamond League
17 World Athletics Half Marathon Championships
17 China (venue tba) – Wanda Diamond League