Organizers of The World Games 2022 have made the final turn and are now in the sprint to the finish line to get Birmingham, Alabama ready to host the world in a little over 10 months.
While the state of the pandemic and how it might affect the event remains a concern, what can be controlled is on track.
“We’ve got a really good plan in place, we feel good about where we are but now we’ve just got a lot of detailed work to do between our organizing committee and the IWGA to get there,” CEO Nick Sellers tells Around the Rings.
The International World Games Association (IWGA), which stages the 10-day multi-sport event every four years under the patronage of the IOC, was able to send a delegation to Birmingham earlier this month for the first time in more than a year.
IWGA CEO Joachim Gossow, General Manager Chantal Boehi and Sebastian Garvens, Head of Games Services, participated in three days of talks with Sellers and his team.
The IWGA delegation plans to return for another three days in early October, Sellers says, if the pandemic allows them to travel.
He says they will definitely be back for “the last two days of November and first two days of December for meetings with all of our competition managers and then probably 30-40 members of National Olympic Committees Dec. 1st and 2nd “.
At this point, the concern is not whether the venues or the city itself will be ready but if the Covid-19 pandemic will have subsided enough to allow athletes to compete and fans to fill the stands in time for the opening ceremony on July 7, 2022.
Sellers is optimistic and hopes that the worst of the pandemic will have passed by the spring. But he says there is current issue tied to the pandemic that threatens to prevent some qualified athletes from being able to compete in Birmingham.
U.S. consulate offices overseas where athletes and fans are required to go to get their visas to enter the United States have been closed in many countries. Sellers say there is an estimated 18 month backlog in many countries to get a visa.
Sellers said The World Games organizers, along with the USOPC and other major sports franchises, traveled to Washington DC a few weeks ago to ask the U.S. Congress “to help prime the pump and get these employees back in these consul offices as quickly and safely as possible”.
In the meantime, Sellers says they are urging international federations “if you think a team, a country or an athlete is going to qualify, even if they’re not in the top eight right now but they might be and you’re still going through qualifiers, get your visas, go ahead and get in line”.
About 3,600 athletes from 100 countries are expected to compete in Birmingham in 34 sports.
While many of the sports will be familiar, many others will be new to most people and will likely appeal to younger fans. The World Games has recently added the tagline “the new generation of sports” for a promotional video.
“Canopy piloting is a great example,” Sellers tells ATR. “It’s where these athletes are jumping out of helicopters, they pop a parachute about a thousand feet before the ground. They got to drag a foot across a water runway that we will build in the infield of our international speedway and then they have to land at a precision point.”
“There’s danger, and it’s fast paced and when these guys miss it’s kind of wild.”
Besides being a showcase for emerging sports, The World Games 2022 also wants to make the most of its position between Tokyo 2020 and the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
“We see this as a very important opportunity to continue to encourage and promote international sports in America right now coming out of the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics, where no fans were able to be in the stands, where TV ratings were down a little bit, we need to get this young generation fired up again about international sports and what they can mean as a global unification experience,” Sellers says.
“We’re trying to get out soon to visit our friends at the USOPC in Colorado Springs and develop a partnership between us. We think the World Games can serve as a tremendous entrée to promote LA28, the next time the Olympics are back in the United States.”
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