Late last week there was some confusion in the weightlifting community when South Korean weightlifting fan Shin Yong Jin — who regularly posts weightlifting news and training clips — uploaded the following caption to his Instagram account:
In November 2017, Ashgabat in Turkmenistan was selected as the venue for the 2018 WWC, but eventually the organizers decided to postpone the competition to Karaganda. It is expected to be officially announced in the near future. 018 WWC will be held from November 24 to December 3. It is expected to return to the platform of Kazakhstan’s Ilya Ilyin and Zulfiya Chinshanlo in this tournament.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgVI2HYlHj9/
But over the weekend, the International Weightlifting Federation uploaded a short, simple statement that contradicted the post, all the way down to the date.
2018 IWF World Championships date now set
The 2018 IWF World Championships Ashgabat, TKM will be held on 1-10 November.
The IWF Executive Board will meet on 29-30 October while the Congress will be on 31 October.
The list of competitors, meanwhile, is yet to be finalized. While widespread doping issues led the nation of Kazakhstan to receive a one-year ban from international competition last September, the ban will lift in time for Kazakhstan’s weightlifters to compete in November.
The last two Weightlifting World Championships were held in the United States (Houston in 2015 and Anaheim in 2017) and the 2018 Worlds will be the first held in Asia since Antalya, Turkey hosted the 2010 competition. The IWF has said that Turkmenistan’s successful job hosting the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games was part of the reason they were selected.
The 2018 WWC was originally slated to be held in Lima, Peru, but an IWF spokesperson said in November that Peru relinquished its role as host to “support the sport’s family,” declining to give a further reason for the move. The 2019 WWC is currently scheduled to be held in Pattaya, Thailand.
Featured image via @iwfnet on Instagram.