World Athletics Championships in Oregon moved to July 2022 to avoid clash with Olympic Games

Top British athletes, like the 200m world champion Dina Asher-Smith, will face a difficult decision over which competitions to take on in a busy summer

The World Athletics Championships in Oregon have been moved from August 2021 to July 2022 to avoid a clash with the rescheduled Olympic Games.

The Tokyo 2020 Games have been postponed by 12 months due to the coronavirus crisis, with Japan announcing a state of emergency last week as it battles the disease. In order to avoid having the sport’s most prestigious events in the same summer, the World Championships have now be moved to run from 15-24 July the following year.

Sebastian Coe, the president of World Athletics, hinted last week that the sport would attempt to accommodate the European Championships and the Commonwealth Games alongside the Worlds in one stacked summer within a six-week period, and that will now be the case.

Birmingham’s 2022 Commonwealths are set to begin on 27 July, while Munich’s 2022 European Championships are due to start two weeks later on 11 August. The Commonwealth Games could yet be moved to an earlier date, but the likelihood is that it will stay put.

Top British athletes, like the 200m world champion Dina Asher-Smith, will therefore face a difficult decision over which competitions to take on, although Coe insisted he wanted the “treble” to be a possibility.

“I do want the treble to be on,” Coe said last week. “I’m not going to speculate on any further discussions because they are ongoing. I really do want to try and make this work, but there will inevitably be some compromises along the road.”

World Athletics said in a statement that it “approved the new dates this week after extensive discussions with the sport’s stakeholders”.

Athletics in summer of 2022

• World Championships, 15-24 July
• Commonwealth Games, 27 July-7 August
• European Championships, 11-21 August