400 metres hurdles

The 400 metres hurdles is a track and field hurdling event. The event has been on the Olympic athletics programme since 1900 for men and since 1984 for women.

On a standard outdoor track, 400 metres is the length of the inside lane once around the stadium. Runners stay in their lanes the entire way after starting out of the blocks and must clear ten hurdles that are evenly spaced around the track. The hurdles are positioned and weighted so that they fall forward if bumped into with sufficient force, to prevent injury to the runners. Although there is no longer any penalty for knocking hurdles over, runners prefer to clear them cleanly, as touching them during the race slows runners down.

The best male athletes can run the 400 m hurdles in a time of around 47 seconds, while the best female athletes achieve a time of around 53 seconds. The current men's and women's world record holders are Kevin Young with 46.78 seconds and Yuliya Pechonkina with 52.34 seconds. Compared to the 400 metres run, the hurdles race takes the men about three seconds longer and the women four seconds longer.

2017 World Championships in Athletics

The 16th World Championships in Athletics are scheduled to be held in 2017 in London, United Kingdom. London was officially awarded the Championships by the IAAF, in Monaco on 11 November 2011.

Bidding process

When the seeking deadline passed on 1 September 2011, two candidate cities (London and Doha) had confirmed their candidatures. Barcelona, which investigated a bid, withdrew citing a lack of support from the local population and financial difficulties. IAAF Evaluation Commission will evaluate the bids of the two cities. The commission visited London on 2 October before departing for Doha on 4 October and staying there until 6 October with the final announcement of the winner on 11 November 2011. On 11 November 2011, the winner was officially announced as London.

Doha

On 5 September 2011 Doha launched its marketing bid for the 2017 World Championships. The slogan of the bid was "The RIGHT PARTNER for a stronger World Championships." The bid was led by Abdullah Al Zaini and Aphrodite Moschoudi. Moschoudi successfully led Qatar's bid for the 2015 Handball World Championships. Doha also brought in Brian Roe, a member of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Technical Committee. The bid was for the championships to be held in the renovated, climate-controlled Khalifa Stadium. The Corniche prominade was to hold the road races, with the committee proposing to hold the marathon at night after the opening ceremony.

2013 World Championships in Athletics

The 14th IAAF World Championships in Athletics (or just Moscow 2013) was an international athletics competition held in Moscow, Russia, from 10–18 August 2013. Russia won the most gold medals to top the table for the first time since 2001. It was also the first time ever the host nation took the top of the medal table. The United States won the most overall medals. With 1,784 athletes from 203 countries it was the biggest single sports event of the year. The number of spectators for the evening sessions was 268,548 surpassing Daegu 2011.

Jamaica's Usain Bolt and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce both won three gold medals in the men's and women's 100 metres, 200 metres and 4×100 metres relay respectively to become the most successful athletes at the event. This achievement also earned Bolt the title of being the most successful athlete in the history of the World Championships with eight gold and two silver medals. Prior to the competition, four sprinters were banned on doping charges.

World championship

A world championship is generally an international sports competition open to elite competitors from across the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport or contest.

The title is usually awarded through a combination of specific contests or, less commonly, ranking systems (e.g. the ICC Test Championship), or a combination of the two (e.g. World Triathlon Championships in Triathlon). This determines a 'world champion', who or which is commonly considered the best nation, team, individual (or other entity) in the world in a particular field, although the vagaries of sport ensure that the competitor recognised at the best in an event is not always the 'world champion' (see Underdog).

Certain sports do not have a world championship, instead they may organise a world cup competition, or they may organize both. Often, the use of the term cup or championship in this sense is just a choice of words. Some sports have multiple champions because of multiple organizations such as mixed martial arts, boxing and wrestling.

400 metres

The 400 metres, or 400 metre dash, is a common sprinting event in track and field competitions. It has been featured in the athletics programme at the Summer Olympics since 1896 (1964 for women). On a standard outdoor running track, it is exactly one lap around the track. Runners start in staggered positions and race in separate lanes for the entire course. In many countries, athletes previously competed in the 440 yard dash (402.336 m)—which is the length of a quarter of a mile and was referred to as the 'quarter-mile'—instead of the 400 m (437.445 yards), though this distance is now obsolete. An athlete who competes in the 400 m may still be referred to as 'quarter-miler'; the distance or event might still be called the "quarter."

Maximum sprint speed capability is a significant contributing factor to success in the event, but athletes also require substantial speed endurance and the ability to cope well with high amounts of lactic acid to sustain a fast speed over a whole lap. While considered to be predominantly an anaerobic event, there is some aerobic involvement and the degree of aerobic training required for 400 metre athletes is open to debate.