Daegu to host World Masters Athletics Championships starting Friday

DAEGU, Aug. 21 (Yonhap) -- Daegu will host an international track and field competition for veteran athletes starting Friday, with former Olympic gold medalists and record holders descending on the southeastern city.

The 26th edition of the World Masters Athletics Championships will bring together 11,176 athletes and their partners from 106 countries and will wrap up on Sept. 3. They will compete in 17 track events, 11 field events and six road races. The opening ceremony is scheduled for 6 p.m. at Daegu Stadium, which will serve as the main venue of the biennial event open to athletes who are 35 or older.

Daegu, widely considered the mecca of athletics in South Korea, is the first South Korean host of the World Masters Athletics Championships.

The city, located some 240 kilometers southeast of Seoul, previously hosted the World Athletics Championships in 2011 and the indoor edition of the World Masters in 2017.

According to the event organizers, Sawang Janpram of Thailand will be the oldest participant at 106. He will compete in discus throw and javelin throw.

Hwang Young-cho, the 1992 Olympic men's marathon champion for South Korea, signed up for the men's 10-kilometer race in Daegu.

He is joined by a number of other former Olympic medalists: Dainis Kula, who won the men's javelin throw gold in 1980 for the Soviet Union and who now represents Latvia; James Beckford, the 1996 men's long jump silver medalist for Jamaica; and Nobuharu Asahara, a member of the silver medal-winning Japanese team in the men's 4x100m relay in 2008.

Former South Korean high jumper Kim Hee-sun, 63, is participating in the women's high jump. She broke the South Korean national record 11 times during her career.

Daegu has recruited about 1,200 volunteers for the competition to assist foreign athletes and officials through the two-week event.

According to the organizers, translation services will be provided in English, Japanese, Chinese, German, Spanish and French. Free shuttle services connecting major transportation hubs and competition venues began operations Thursday, with foreign participants provided with free transit cards.

The organizing committee has also set up programs outside venues to help international athletes and officials experience South Korean culture.

"At the conclusion of this competition, Daegu will have established itself as a global athletics city, having also hosted the World Athletics Championship and the indoor World Masters," an official with the organizing committee said.