World Games will be “spectacular” and a “huge challenge” for Birmingham

After a week of supervision, José Perurena acknowledged the “huge challenge” for the city of Birmingham, Alabama, to host the World Games in the summer of 2022 after being postponed for a year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The president of the International World Games Association (IWGA) held meetings this week with technical delegates of the 34 International Federations that make up the sports program and with representatives of more than 50 National Olympic Committees with whom he visited, together with the Organizing Committee, each sports venue and reviewed every detail of the logistics of the Games that will be inaugurated in just seven months.

In arguing the dimension of the city’s challenge, he recalled the difference with the Olympic Games, for which all the structures of the Central Government and other instances are mobilized.

“Here it is primarily Birmingham City Council, which has also been forced to postpone the mega-event by a year. That comes at a cost. You’re about to do a Games for which you’ve already hired 90 percent of the staff, and you’re not going to say ‘go home’....”

“They have made a great effort, the budget has had to be readjusted, but at the same time that has allowed us to review very well the security processes and procedures, the entrance and exit of the stadiums and in other areas... And I am convinced that it will be a spectacular Games.”

Perurena said that despite the one-year postponement, all the sponsors, some 40, remained. “And that is another added value: confidence in the Organizing Committee.”

The executive is confident that the expectations for ticket sales will be met. Since the announcement of the Covid-19 pandemic two years ago, uncertainty has marked the purchase of tickets too far in advance for sporting events and concerts.

“The experience we have is that people end up buying tickets a month in advance.”

The multi-sport event will run from July 7-17, 2022. The program includes 34 sports with 58 disciplines and 223 medal events. During the 10 days of competition, 3,600 athletes from some 100 countries are expected.

Perurena commented that all the meetings in Birmingham were attended by its mayor, Randall Woodfin, and the president of the Organizing Committee, Jonathan Porter.

The holding of these meetings coincided with the regeneration of a global scare over the emergence of the Omicron variant of the coronavirus, which in a few weeks has already been detected in 58 countries in the six regions of the World Health Organization. In the United States it has been discovered in more than 20 states.

Perurena acknowledged to Around the Rings that the epidemiological situation was mentioned in questions from International Federations and Olympic Committees, “but they were generally hesitant to vaccinate.”

“It has been agreed that in case of those countries with problems with their vaccines some formula of help can be explored with the United States or an application to the IOC through the NOCs to access what is donated for Tokyo. We are hopeful that there will be no restrictions that will impede the development of the Games”.

“We are talking about July, there are still seven months to go... I believe that by then there will be a control situation, but not one that will limit people’s functioning.”

“There is still no definitive scientific determination on the new variant. We don’t like to anticipate or put the bandage before we have the wound.”

“A limit situation would be like Tokyo, that the Games have to be held in a ‘bubble’, and it would not be complex because the athletes would be at the University of Birmingham, with all the conditions. More complicated would have been with hotel accommodation as in the previous venue in Poland (Wroclaw) in 2017″.

“That possibility fits, but we did not contemplate it. The current option is the one we saw now in the new stadium in Birmingham, with full stands.”

Perurena was referring to the “Protective Stadium,” a multi-purpose facility, which seats more than 47,000 spectators and was inaugurated on October 2, 2021 as a new venue for American soccer competitions and will host the opening and closing ceremonies of the World Games.

The sports leader also confirmed that a new meeting will be held with the Organizing Committee at the end of March to assess the epidemiological situation, the visa process and the qualifying tournaments.

Delegations should report visa problems with any athlete to the Organizing Committee, which will be in contact with the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, in charge of dealing with the State Department.

To facilitate this process, the IWGA agreed to bring forward the end of the qualifying tournaments to March 31 instead of May, the original date.

Perurena said that meeting in a little more than three months will confirm “a Plan B if necessary, but for the moment we continue with the roadmap of a fully open Games”.