Once the cost of staging the Championships, reconstructing the Khalifa Stadium with state-of-the-art solar cooling technology and guaranteeing sponsor and television income Doha's package added up to an incredible $236.2 million (£147.7 million). 

The package includes underwriting the $7.2 million (£4.5 million) prize money to be awarded at the Championships and guaranteeing to find a new sponsor for the period between 2012 and 2017 and making sure that Al Jazeera renew their television deal to broadcast the International Association of Athletics Federations' (IAAF) major events, a figure worth $29 million (£18 million). 

They also budgeting $80 million (£50 million) to stage the Championships and $120 million (£75 million) to rebuild the Khalifa Stadium.

The nine-member delegation, led by IAAF vice-president Dahlan Al-Hamad, who is the President of the Qatar Association of Athletics Federations (QAAF), had began their presentation by 
offering to "continue the journey of taking the World Championships to new regions" by offering a "new solution" which would help athletes cope with competing in conditions that can climb as high as 42 degrees. 

This included installing solar-powered technology in the Khalifa Stadium, which they claimed means they can regulate the conditions for different events following research at the Aspire centre there is an optimal temperature for different events. 

"It is very exciting," said Aphrodite Moschoudi, the strategic planning manager for Doha 2017. 

"It [the Championships] won't have rain and we can decide the temperature - you can't get better than that.

"We will have the best conditions for world records."

They also confirmed plans to hold the endurance events like the marathon and walking races in the evening to avoid the worst of the weather conditions and would install projectors and floodlights every 30 minutes to make sure that they could be broadcast in the highest quality. 

Before the presentations started, IAAF vice-president Bob Hersh had given what was supposed to be private presentation to the members of the Council following his visits to both Doha and London as head of the Evaluation Commission.

But a technical error meant that it was briefly broadcast to the media.

It lasted only a few minutes before it was switched off again.

But what we discovered was the Evaluation Commission were concerned about the poor crowds that had attended meetings in the Qatari capital and the fact that the crowd often left early before the end of the meeting. 

Hersh contrasted this with the excellent attendances for events in London, pointing out that the Diamond League meeting at Crystal Palace was the only one in the series to attract big enough crowds to justify being held over two days.

Doha, though, tried to counter this by guaranteeing that the 40,000-capacity Khalifa Stadium would be "full for every event, every day, every session", which they plan to do by partnering with Qatar Airways to offer special cut-price packages from around the world.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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