European Athletics today announced the winning projects for the five categories in the seventh edition of the European Athletics Innovation Awards.
Each of the winning project teams will receive a cash prize of CHF 2,000 and their entries will now be eligible for the overall prize of CHF 10,000, which will be awarded at the European Athletics Awards Dinner presented by Mondo in Belgrade, Serbia, on Saturday 16 October.
Judging of the record 30 projects entered in the competition was conducted by a six-member international jury led by European Athletics Council member Dr Sylvia Barlag (NED). The evaluation criteria were “quality” and “relevance to athletics”.
“On behalf of European Athletics, I want to thank all those who entered projects in this year’s competition and have invested their time and effort to make athletics better,” said Barlag. “As usual, the jury had a real challenge and in some cases we had two or even three projects in a category that could have been picked.
“After some long and careful discussions, we have finally arrived at a list of category winners that all have the potential to lead to a significant improvement in the way things are done in our sport.”
The categories and winning projects named are:
- Promotion Category - “The social role of an athlete” by Raul Rebane (EST)
- Coaching Category - “A three-year follow-up study of endurance performance and nocturnal HRV of an international level race walker” by Esa Hynynen (FIN) and Ari Nummela (FIN)
- Technology Category- “Trackside Technology and Data Fusion for Developing Athletics Coaching and Performance” by David Kerwin (GBR), Lawrence Cheng (GBR), Gregor Kuntze (GBR), Ian N. Bezodis (GBR), Huiling Tan (GBR), Kyle Roskilly (GBR), John Lowe (GBR), Alan M. Wilson (GBR), and Stephen Hailes (GBR)
- Sustainability Category - “Continuing on the Road to Sustainability” by Ronald Veerbeek (NED)
- Open Category – “Safety Officers for Masters Athletics” by Nicola Maggio (ITA) and Kurt Kaschke (GER)
The overall winner and the entries awarded Honourable Mention will be announced next week.
The European Athletics Innovation Awards were created to encourage research and the sharing of new ideas leading to the promotion and development of the sport of athletics. The biennial competition was initiated in 1998 as the European Athletics Science Awards and is open to sport scientists, coaches, and students anywhere in Europe.
This year’s contest attracted a total of 30 entry files with authors from more than 16 countries.