Special Cover on 22nd Asian Athletics Championships Odisha 2017

Special Cover was released to commemorate the 22nd Asian Athletics Championships on 5th July 2017 at Bhubaneswar ( Approval No. OD/09/2017).

Odisha is set to host the 22nd edition of the Asian Athletics Championship (AAC), where over 1,200 athletes and officials from 44 countries in Asia will take part in one of the largest sporting Asian athletics events to be in India.

This edition of the tournament will be the biggest event in the competition’s history, with the participation of over 800 athletes from 45 countries. It is for the third time that the tournament will be held in India after being first held in 1977. The AAC has been hosted by New Delhi in 1989 and Pune in 2013 earlier.

The event holds a lot of importance as the winners of the Asian Athletics Championship will be given direct entry into the IAFF World Championships, which is slated to take place in August. There are 42 events in total — 21 for men and 21 for women.

Venue:

This edition of the AAC will be hosted at Bhubaneshwar’s Kalinga Stadium, which was given a dramatic makeover after Ranchi pulled out to leave the city just 90 days to prepare itself. The stadium boasts an Olympic-level synthetic track, a renovated warm-up track, state-of-the-art high mast floodlights and newly-installed.