The IAAF Council held a session Tuesday in Mombasa, Kenya, to select two host cities for the 2011 and 2013 World Championships out of four candidates - Barcelona, Spain; Brisbane, Australia; Daegu, South Korea and Moscow, Russia.
In the first round of voting for the 2011 venue, South Korea's Daegu left behind Moscow and the rest of the four candidate cities, but in the second round the IAAF Council preferred Moscow to Barcelona and Brisbane as the venue for the 14th World Championship.
The 11th IAAF World Championship in Athletics will be held in Osaka, Japan in 2007, and the 12th edition of the championships will be hosted by Berlin, Germany in 2009.
Dmitry Chernyshenko, the president of Russia's 2014 Winter Olympics bidding committee, said that the scale of the event practically equals the scale of the Summer Olympics, and that today's decision would unquestionably boost the development of sports in Russia.
"This will give a boost to the development of sports in the country, particularly the development of track and field," he said.
Russia's Black Sea resort city of Sochi has been short-listed as a candidate city to host the 2014 Olympic Winter Games, along with Austria's Salzburg and South Korea's PyeongChang.
The city previously bid for the 1998 and 2002 Winter Olympics, but was rejected largely due to its poor-quality Soviet-era infrastructure. The winner of the bid will be announced in July 2007 in Guatemala City.
