To host the 2029 World Championships
On Sunday, World Aquatics selected Beijing as the host for the 2029 World Championships, bringing the event to an Olympic host city, Mathew De George reports for Swimming World.
Beijing hosted the Summer Olympics in 2008 and the 2022 Winter Games. The China Swimming Association and the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Sports will organize the games. It will also include the World Aquatics Masters Championships later that year.
“Beijing has repeatedly welcomed major aquatics events, providing excellent conditions enabling our athletes to perform at their best. For this, we are deeply grateful,” World Aquatics President Husain Al-Musallam said in a press release.
“Thanks to our longstanding collaboration with our friends in China, we know the global aquatics community can look forward to world-class sporting action and entertainment in one of the world’s most iconic cities. We are also very thankful to the other cities interested in hosting. The World Aquatics Championships have become a compelling event for participants, spectators, viewers, partners, and organizers alike.”
“The People’s Republic of China is deeply passionate about aquatic sports. We have a proud history of welcoming the best aquatics athletes to our country,” China Swimming Association President Zhou Jihong said.
“We are therefore very honored that Beijing has been awarded the opportunity to host the world’s largest aquatics event, the World Aquatics Championships, in 2029.”
Beijing has never hosted a World Aquatics Championship before. Only one has ever been staged in China, the 2011 event in Shanghai. China hosted two short-course World Championships, in Shanghai in 2006 and Hangzhou in 2018.
Sites are already set for the 2025 championships (Singapore) and 2027 (Budapest).
Beijing 2029 will be the fourth time in the last five installments and the fifth in the previous seven that Worlds is held in Asia. World Aquatics will visit China three times in 2024, with the Artistic Swimming World Cup in Beijing and the Diving World Cup Super Final in Xi’an in April, then a Swimming World Cup stop in Shanghai in October.
Beijing has hosted meets in the World Aquatics’ Swimming World Cup on 15 occasions and numerous events in other aquatic disciplines.
