AN official of the Asian Athletics Association gave a thumbs up on the site of the 2019 Southeast Asian Games, the New Clark City athletics center, saying the new stadium is capable of hosting a world championship competition.
Valso Cuddikotta, one of the technical delegates for athletics in the coming SEA Games, said he is impressed with the New Clark City stadium as it is capable of getting a Class One certification for the entire facilities from the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), the world governing body of the sport.
Cuddikota is a member of the technical committee of the Asian Athletics Association, and a technical delegate in the last three editions of the Asian Games.
“They can conduct any event of the highest magnitude in Clark City,” said Cuddikota during a press conference during the second technical delegates meeting at the Manila Hotel on Wednesday.
“They can conduct anything like the World Championship. Hopefully, they can work on a Class One certification so they can get the World Championships in years to come,” said Cuddikota, who also serves as the secretary general of the Athletics Federation of India.
“They have an athletics stadium with eight lanes, a six-lane warm-up track, and a separate throwing area for long throws. These facilities are required for world championship level competitions. Even in the last SEA Games in Malaysia, they had a warm-up area, they had a main stadium, but they have no separate throwing area,” said Cuddikota.
Cuddikota said the New Clark City athletics center only needs to increase its capacity to 30,000 in order to be able to get an IAAF certification. Cuddikota, however, said he received word that there is a provision to increase the stadium capacity of the 20,000-seater stadium.
“The provision is there. They can me 30,000. It’s not a difficult job. They can make 30,000 and conduct a world championship here,” said Cuddikota.
Cuddikota is confident that with the world-class stadium, the SEA Games athletics competition stands to be the best ever.
“It has come out very well, equipment-wise. They chose the best equipment. It is world class. This could be one of the best-ever SEA Games conducted in the last few years. I would say that the efforts but by the organizing committee of the SEA Games, they have done an extremely good job to see that the event takes place very well,” said Cuddikota.
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