IAAF announce qualifying standards for the 2015 World Championships

The 2015 IAAF World Athletic Championships will be held in Beijing, China between the 22nd  and 30th of August. Yesterday on the 19th of November, the IAAF announced the qualifying standards which can be seen below.

One of the big changes is that they have done away with the 'A' and 'B' standards. There is now just one qualifying standard. The full conditions can be seen HERE

The qualification period is as follows....
a) For the 10,000m, marathon, race walks, relays and combined events: from 1 January 2014 to 10 August 2015 (closing date for the final entries)
b) For all other events: from 1 October 2014 to 10 August 2015 (closing date for the final entries).

Looking through the various standards, it's obvious that some are probably beyond the current abilities of a lot of Irish athletes, especially the sprint events. One possible exception might be Kelly Proper of Ferrybank AC who has a PB from the 2014 European Championships of 23.15 in the 200m. As you can see above, the standard is 23:20.

In the womens marathon, the standard is 2:44 which is one minute slower than the standard for the 2013 world championships. With only 3 athletes allowed on the Irish team, it'll be interesting to see who gets selected? Already, the three Irish women on the team who went to the European Championships in Zurich last August have already qualified based on their times...
Fionnuala Britton 2:31:46, Sarah Mulligan 2:42:43 and Barbara Sanchez who is one second inside the standard with 2:43:59!
There are others as well including Maria McCambridge who finished 2nd in the Dublin marathon in 2:34:19. Add a few others into the mix and several Irish women might be in contention for those 3 spots.

2019 World Championships : In other related news, it was also announced in the last few days that the 2019 World Athletic Championships will be held in Doha in Qatar.
The voting was as follows:
First round: Doha - 12, Eugene - 9, Barcelona - 6 (Barcelona was eliminated).
Second round: Doha - 15, Eugene - 12.

Due to the extreme heat, the competition will be held in October as opposed to August. Expect...
1) It will still be too hot
2) The crowds will be small...i.e. empty stadium
3) Impact on European Cross Country Championships in December.
4) Huge local support for Qatari athletes who were all born in Ethiopia and Kenya.