*The best world championships on athletes' performances we have ever had, says Sebastian Coe
*Ten-day track and field extravaganza comes to a blockbuster end at Khalifa International Stadium

Dahlan al-Hamad, Vice Chairman of the Organising Committee and Director General of the World Athletics Championship Qatar 2019, said the Doha Worlds will inspire the young generation to take up the sport and it will leave a lasting impact in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa region).

The ten-day track and field extravaganza came to a blockbuster end at the Khalifa International Stadium last night.

The championships, the first ever to be held in the Middle East, was a resounding success with Sebastian Coe, President of the International Athletics Federation, hailing the sporting achievement at the Qatari capital as the best ever.

“Our legacy here is to make new generation, those kids, interested in sports.

"This is what we want, and we will keep promoting sports until we see we are really going in the right direction.

"We have to engage kids in sports and we feel athletics is the right sport to engage those people,” Dahlan said on Sunday at a press conference, accompanied by Coe.

“We are really thrilled to partner with the IAAF to expand the horizon of athletics in the Middle East and the MENA region.

It is a collective effort of our people and the government,” he added.

Dahlan said the feedback from the athletes and officials who attended the championships were positive as they thoroughly enjoyed the Qatari hospitality and lauded the high level organisation of one of the world’s greatest sporting showpieces.

“The championships witnessed many good performances including a world record.

"Athletes were happy to be in Doha and we hope they will leave Qatar with a lot of happy memories. This is really important for us because we believe that athletics has to be in this region. We believe that there are generations who are hungry for athletics,” he said.

“If we go back to 1997 when athletics was just about the national team, and now we can see the fans in athletics are really increasing.

The objective of organising these championships was to expand the sport in the region.

"Also we are happy because in Qatar, we have more than 100 communities, our duty is to make those communities to celebrate and see their athletes,” added Dahlan.

After a slow start, the attendance at the Khalifa stadium picked up with people from different nationalities joining to create a festive atmosphere as they rooted for their favourite athletes.

On Friday, 42,180 people watched home favourite Mutaz Barshim defend his high jump world title.

“Filling stadiums is the challenge to everybody. This wasn’t the challenge in this world championships only, it is a challenge in every championships,” said Dahlan.

“First two days were hectic but if you see the last three days, the stadium was filled because people started to appreciate the results of the athletes.”

“We don’t say that we are perfect.

"There is no perfect in the world, everybody has shortcomings.

There are many lessons (to be learnt) and we will review them after the championships,” he added.

Dahlan, who is also the President of Asian Athletics Association (AAA), was impressed with the performances of the athletes from the Asian continent.“I am happy that Asian countries are progressing. Things are going good.

"We have good cooperation with the IAAF and AAA, so this is something we want to enhance, for the time being we have good results from Asian countries like China, Qatar and Japan,” he noted.

Coe, meanwhile, praised the quality of the performances and the breakthrough of young athletes at the Doha Worlds.

The IAAF chief said that 28% of the medallists at the championships were younger than 24, and spoke of "the best world championships on athletes' performances we have ever had," including world records in the new mixed relay and 400-metre hurdles.

"Our sport is in pretty good shape. It is pretty clear to us on athlete performance this is the best World Championships we have ever had," the two-time Olympic champion in 1500m said.

He hailed the fact that 40 countries had medalled ahead of the last day’s last seven finals, which also showed that it is right to hold the championships in new markets such as Qatar."We live in a global society," Coe insisted.

"We must share the sport with more than nine or 10 places. It is really important the sport moves around the world, and it cannot forge its relationships based on political structures or transitory political systems.

"We would not have sporting relationships (otherwise).That is why sport will continue to work and sweat as hard as it does to make social change.

"We are not competitors, we are collaborators and organisations that are smart are actually partnering as they realise they can elicit that change,” he added,

Coe named sport "the best diplomat," saying: "Sports continues to work hard to help create social change. We had challenges but addressed them.

"I think we came through pretty good," Coe said.