South Sudan to send three-member delegation to World Athletics Championships
Abraham Majok Guem will be South Sudan’s torch bearer and the country’s sole representative at the World Athletics Championship in Eugene, Oregon.
Oregon, the US city located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, will host the worlds tournament between July 15 and 24.
Guem, 23, will be the only athlete to fly the country’s flag in his specialty – 1500 metres. The Japan-based team will be under coaches Abdullah Bol and Joseph Ramadan.
“He will travel directly to Oregon from Tokyo,” Marco Akol Deng, South Sudan’s National Athletics Association Secretary General, told City Review Sports.
“It is a really good opportunity to have our athletes participate and represent South Sudan in the World Championship,” added Akol.
Guem has been on a steady rise of form that saw him break the National Record twice this year.
On June 22, Guem broke his own national record that he had set three months earlier at the World Athletics Indoor Championships, Štark Arena, Beograd in Serbia.
Participating at the world’s biggest athletics-only championship will give Guem a bigger platform to work his way up the ranks in the three and a half lap-race.
Oregon will for the first time hold the global championship that brings together the world’s best athletes and fans from more than 200 different countries.
There will be 49 event disciplines spread across 16 in-stadium sessions and 6 road events.
Last week, organisers revealed the cutting edge and heavier medals for the maiden World Championship to be hosted on the US soil. “It was imperative that our medals were true to the unique, unmissable, unconventional nature of the first World Athletics Championships on U.S. soil,” said Niels de Vos, Executive Director- Oregon’s Local Organising Committee said.
The medals depart from the traditional die-cast variety, using instead the ultra-modern and durable material of Corian, which has been subsequently inlaid with the relevant precious metal. The use of Corian enables the finely detailed carving of intricate relief work featured in the designs – something just not possible using conventional medal techniques.
While traditional in shape and weight, the medals will look very different, even down to the attachment of the ribbon, which uses a bar inserted inside the body of the medal to ensure both longevity and the maintenance of clean design lines.
One side of the medals is inspired by the cross-section of a tree, complete with seven rings to represent the seven regions of Oregon with the logo of WCH Oregon22 at its heart. The tactile experience is completed by the outer edge of each medal, which is textured to feel like tree bark.
Additional reporting by World Athletics.
