The press conference here in Brussels to launch the Doha bid for the 2017 IAAF World Athletics Championships took place in a medium-sized room at the Crowne Plaza hotel which was nevertheless large enough to accommodate the bid's chairman, executive director and head of strategic planning, a delegation from Doha itself, and an international selection of broadcasters, on-line and print journalists. Oh, and one elephant.

Anyway, the Arab coffee that was served beforehand tasted lovely – fragrant, with a touch of bitterness, and yet almost a hint of Earl Grey tea about it...

The brochure - proclaiming Doha as The Right Partner – was as glossy as you might have expected, and contained incontrovertible facts about the city's record of hosting major sporting events, and its growing ambitions to host more.

Microphones were of course provided to all the speakers, and they all worked. As did the one passed among those who wanted to ask questions at the appropriate time. It's always helpful to get the technology right on these occasions, as indeed it is when you are putting on a major sporting event.

Which is why the second generation air conditioning system being devised for the Khalifa International Stadium – solar powered, with magnificent irony – will be so important when it is perfected, something that is scheduled to happen more than a year before the Championships would begin.

As His Excellency Sheikh Saoud Bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the bid chairman, pointed out, the development would have a major effect on the operating temperatures for athletes in the stadium, reducing the average midday temperature in mid -September – the proposed time frame of the Championships – from between 36-37 degrees to between 18-22 degrees.

But yes. This elephant.

In the end it was addressed by John Inverdale of the BBC, who asked if all the controversy over the successful Qatari bid for the 2022 World Cup, and the question marks about its integrity in the wake of the life ban subsequently imposed on the Asian football President Mohamed Bin Hamman (pictured with David Beckham) following a bribery scandal, would have any bearing on the success of Doha's 2017 bid.


"I don't think so," Al Thani responded. "The date of the 2022 has been set. With any event, always there will be some talk and all the other things, but now the reality of the 2022 World cup is there.

"We have a strategy, we are confident of the sport legacy that it will give for the country. We are looking to see what are the other major sporting events that can continue to add value to our country."

And Al Thani was able to point out that Doha was hoping to build on a link with athletics that had been relatively long-established.

"We have a long partnership with the IAAF," he said. "We held the first grand prix athletics event in the region. This was 1997. In the Samsung Diamond League, we were the first meeting.

"And we have hosted the World Indoor Championships, so we are not talking about something that we have thought about one or two years ago. This was a long strategy that we wanted Doha to be the capital of athletics."

The elephant may still have been there - but at least it had been fed and watered.

The other obvious concern to be addressed was how racing outside the climate-cooled main stadium and warm-up stadiums would be affected by the heat.

Doha's solution to this problem, in the case of the marathon, will be to hold it at night along the Corniche – the central promenade that runs along the waterfront. The average night-time temperatures, Al Thani added, were between 27-29 degrees.

Abdulla Al Zaini, the bid's executive director, explained how the lighting arrangements had already been sorted out to enable TV coverage.

Presumably these arrangements will not consist of soldiers lining the route with flaming firebrands, as it did in the 1960 Rome Olympics, where the marathon began just before sundown and finished in darkness in order to avoid stifling midday heat.

That marathon run more than half a century ago produced images of enduring drama as Ethiopia's Abebe Bikila padded barefoot down the ancient Appian Way and onwards to the Arch of Constantine  under the uneven spotlight of the TV vehicle following him as the wavering torches illuminated the general progress.

No doubt the Doha bidders envisage similarly unusual and dramatic action unfolding on their Corniche.

That said, running a marathon in 27-29 degrees of heat would hardly be a cakewalk.

Mike Rowbottom, one of Britain's most talented sportswriters, has covered the last five Summer and four Winter Olympics for The Independent. Previously he has worked for the Daily Mail, The Times, The Observer, the Sunday Correspondent and The Guardian. He is now chief feature writer for insidethegames. Rowbottom's Twitter feed can be accessed here.