Daegu worlds are the latest signal of South Korean sporting ambitions

By Dirk Godder Aug 23, 2011, 8:50 GMT

Seoul - The world athletics championships come to mainland Asia for the first time in Daegu from Saturday onwards as South Korea further strengthens its role as a sports power.

More than 2,000 athletes from at least 200 countries will compete at the word championships, which is considered the third biggest sports event next to the football World Cup and the Olympics.

South Korea hosted the Summer Olympics 1988 in Seoul and co-hosted the 2002 World Cup with Japan, an event which featured games in Daegu.

Last month, South Korea was elected to host the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

Daegu is the first city in mainland Asia to host the athletics worlds as the previous two editions took place in Japan (Tokyo 1991 and Osaka 2007).

South Korean athletes are not expected to come near the podium in the running, jumping and throwing events but hope for a boost of the sport.

'We are expecting to have 10 finalists in 10 events. That's our goal in this championships,' says Korean team chief coach Moon Bong Gi.

But the nation's biggest companies have played an important role in landing the big events.

Samsung, Hyundai and Korean Air are well established in the world of sport through major sponsorships. Some of their leaders also high-ranking domestic and international sports officials.

This commitment is often coupled with the political card - sports events to help reconciliation with communist North Korea (which appears not to be sending athletes to Daegu) - and the pledge that big events serve the development of sport in the country and the region.

The combination appears irresistable, as Pyeongchang landed the 2018 Games with the slogan 'New Horizons' and Daegu major Kim Bum Il (marketing director at the Seoul Olympics) had the same in mind after beating Brisbane and Moscow for the 2011 athletics worlds.

'We will do out best to create a new athletics culture in the emerging countries. We will make an example and will try our best to spread it out not only in our region, but to the rest of the world,' said Kim.

Lamine Diack, president of the ruling athletics body IAAF, told the German Press Agency dpa: 'Korea is one of the Asian tiger economies that are the new dynamos of the world.

'Asia, a continent possessing more than one-third of the world's population, with its huge financial resources offers us and its peoples the potential to develop our sport massively in Korea and the continent as a whole.'

The host city of Daegu has dressed itself up for Usain Bolt, Yelena Isinbayeva and company.

Located some 300km south-east of Seoul, Daegu is South Korea's fourth largest city with a population of 2.5 million. Daegu is famous for the Haeinsa temple and is also often associated with the textile industry and apple growing.

Like all South Korean cities, Daegu hopes to step out of the shadow of the capital Seoul through the world championships. It's sporting history includes the 2002 World Cup matches and the 2003 University Games.

Competition takes place in the 66,000-seat Daegu Stadium which has a super-fast track. Capacity will be lowered to 40,000 for the August 27 opening ceremony and to around 33,000 for the competition which runs until September 4.