Doha can bid for the 2017 world championships with a late September date to avoid the summer desert heat, IAAF President Lamine Diack said Sunday. Diack added that Barcelona, Spain, had decided at the last moment to drop out of the bid process, leaving only the Qatari capital to face London. London announced last month that it will launch a bid led by Sebastian Coe, the organizing committee chairman for the London Olympics. The IAAF is expected to announce the winning bid on Nov. 11. The IAAF gave no reason why Barcelona decided against bidding. Earlier, Budapest, Hungary, took a similar decision. The IOC executive board last week agreed to the Qatari city's request for a Sept. 20-Oct. 20 time frame to avoid the summer heat when it bids for the 2020 Olympics. Qatar has already won the right to host the first World Cup in the Middle East in 2022. The event will be held in June, and the desert country has proposed air-conditioned stadiums to beat the heat. Diack said the world championships could be pushed back to the very end of the season around mid-September, with no major meetings scheduled later. “It is possible that a date can vary,” Diack said after a meeting of the IAAF Council. “I will not be hostile to that, if it concludes the season.” London's chances depend on an athletics track being maintained in the 2012 Olympic Stadium. “If they have no stadium, they have no chance,” Diack told Reuters in an interview Saturday. IAAF spokesman Nick Davies said British officials had assured the IAAF there would be a track in the stadium. The bid has been clouded by a row over the Olympic Stadium, with Premier League soccer club Tottenham Hotspur seeking a judicial review of the decision to allow West Ham United to take over the facility after next year's Games. West Ham has said it would retain a track in the stadium. The Daegu championships began on Aug. 27 and ended Sunday. Moscow will hold the event in 2013 and Beijing in 2015. IAAF officials said these have been a clean championships with no positive doping tests reported as of mid-day Sunday. Blood samples from 1,848 athletes, all of the accredited participants, have been collected during the championships for current and future analysis as part of a breakthrough IAAF project. The program is in addition to in-competition testing of more than 500 urine samples.
