Tokyo will stage the 2025 World Championships after beating rival bids from Nairobi, Silesia and Singapore.
“Within an extremely strong field of candidates, Tokyo offered a compelling bid,” World Athletics president Lord Coe said.
Tokyo hosted the Olympics in 2021, with events taking place a year later than intended and behind closed doors because of the coronavirus pandemic.
This year’s Championships, delayed from 2021, begin in Oregon on Friday.
The 2023 Championships will be held in Budapest.
The high-tech Mondo track laid at Tokyo’s Olympic Stadium received mostly positive reviews from athletes. New world records were set in both the men’s and women’s 400m hurdles by Norway’s Karsten Warholm and the United States’ Sydney McLaughlin.
Coe said he still wants a landmark World Championships staged in Africa for the first time, despite Nairobi being overlooked for 2025.
“My ambition to see a World Championships in Africa, and possibly in Nairobi, is undiminished,” he told BBC Sport Africa.
“It is really important that we work together with Africa to make sure that their time comes, and their time comes when it’s right.”
Athletics’ return to Tokyo means the Japanese capital bookends a five-year run of major championships each summer, a situation caused by the pandemic and postponements.
The world’s best will also compete at the Olympics in Paris in 2024. (BBC)
