IAAF Jr. World Championships, July 14

IAAF World Jr. Track
With the IAAF World Junior Championships set to begin at Hayward Field, three countries – Great Britain, the Czech Republic and Slovakia – have descended upon Corvallis for training camps in advance of the milestone event, which is being held in the United States for the first time. The meet features the world’s top teenage talents and is also the first IAAF event staged on US soil in the last 22 years.  The trio arrived the week before meet – July 14 and 15 – and has been utilizing the Whyte Track and Field Center along with the athletic department’s sports medicine and sports performance facilities. Lodging is being provided by the Hilton Garden Inn and OSU’s International Living-Learning Center (ILLC). Additional services for the national teams have come from Dixon Recreation Center and OSU Housing and Dining.  This year’s World Junior Championships are expected to be the biggest IAAF event ever held in the United States. In terms of athletes, the largest ever World Athletics Series (WAS) event hosted by the US was the 1992 IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Boston, where 580 athletes from around the world competed. Based on member federations, the biggest WAS event to be held in the USA was the 1987 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Indianapolis, where 84 nations took part. But this year’s IAAF World Junior Championships, held from July 22-27 in Eugene, is set to surpass both of those marks, as 177 member federations have expressed interest in the championships, with 1,758 athletes provisionally entered.