The Welsh capital is among six cities who have written letters of intent.

The others are New York, Chihuahua or Guadalajara in Mexico, Cheboksary in Russia, Belgrade in Serbia and an unnamed city from Denmark.

Cardiff's interest was revealed during the first day of a meeting of the IAAF's ruling Council in Daegu, South Korea, today.

Cardiff has already expressed an interested in bidding for the 2026 Commonwealth Games.

"We have not submitted a bid to date although we have declared an interest in hosting, as the [World] Half-Marathon [Championships] is within our overall major events strategy," a spokeswoman for UK Athletics told insidethegames.

"We will give more details as the official process progresses."

UK Athletics has already launched a bid to stage the 2017 World Championships at the London 2012 Olympic Stadium, where it was officially confirmed today that they will face competition from Budapest, Doha and a Spanish city, either Barcelona or Seville. 

Britain has hosted the World Half-Marathon Championships three times since 1992 when it was held for the first time in Newcastle when Scotland's Liz McColgan won the women's race and Kenya's Benson Masya the men's event.


It hosted the race again in Bristol in 2001 when the winners were Ethiopia's Haile Gebrselassie and Britain's Paula Radcliffe (pictured).

Birmingham was the host in 2009 when Eriteria's Zersenay Tadese won the race for a fourth consecutive time and Mary Keitany took victory in the women's.

Cardiff has regularly hosted a half-marathon around the city.

Last year's race attracted 15,000 runners but organisers had to apologise to competitors after the course was found to be 193 metres (211 yards) short because of an obstruction on the course.

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