Today marks the 100 day countdown to the European Athletics U20 Championships which return to Tampere in Finland from 7-10 August.
Finland has been a regular venue for major age-group events in recent decades and this will be the fourth time that Tampere - the country’s second biggest city by population - will have staged a major event this century.
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Most recently, Tampere welcomed the world’s outstanding youngsters at the World Athletics U20 Championships in 2018 when Armand Duplantis and Jakob Ingebrigtsen both won medals one month before breakout victories on the senior stage at the 2018 European Athletics Championships in Berlin.
Prior to that, Tampere hosted the 2013 European Athletics U23 Championships as well as the 2003 European Athletics U20 Championships which acted as a springboard for a generation of athletes who would go on to achieve notable success as a senior.
Flashback to Tampere 2003…
At those championships, Ivet Lalova won a 100/200m double to kick-start her illustrious career which included European 100m gold in 2012 - also on Finnish soil in Helsinki - as well as five appearances at the Olympic Games, a record for a Bulgarian athlete.
Portugal’s Nelson Evora came away with a rare double in the horizontal jumps, winning gold in both the long jump and triple jump. Evora focused primarily on the latter discipline as a senior, coming away with world and Olympic titles in 2007 and 2008 and European triple jump gold a decade later in 2018.
Another unusual double was achieved by Germany’s Sophie Krauel who won the 100m hurdles title in 13.28 before adding long jump gold to her list of accolades on the final day, winning by just one centimetre with 6.47m.
And there was also a world U20 record in the 2000m steeplechase - the last staging of the event before it was replaced with the 3000m steeplechase in 2005 - with Romania’s Catalina Oprea winning gold in 6:21.78 to shatter the previous mark by four seconds.
Hosts Finland won four medals at the 2003 European Athletics U20 Championships and fittingly, three of those medals came courtesy of a clean sweep in the men’s javelin, the event most closely associated with Finnish athletics.
Teemu Wirkkala won gold with 79.90m by over six metres from Tero Jarvenpaa (73.66m) with future Olympic silver medallist and 2014 European champion Antti Ruuskanen beginning his lengthy career with bronze (72.87m).
Looking ahead to Tampere 2025…
Last year’s European Athletics U18 Championships in Banska Bystrica could be a useful starting point for predicting some of the likely medallists in Tampere later this year.
Some of the outstanding performances included home favourite Laura Frlickova winning the 100m hurdles title for Slovakia - her country’s first ever gold medal in the relatively short history of the championships - after setting a European U18 best of 12.86 in the semifinal.
Czechia’s Michal Rada also decimated the European U18 best in the 400m hurdles in 49.42 only 10 minutes after his twin sister Nina set up the first half of a family double in the 400m hurdles, winning the women’s final in one of the stories of the championships.
Italy’s Elisa Valensin came away from Banska Bystrica with two gold medals, winning the individual 200m in a championship best of 23.09 before outpacing Poland’s individual 400m winner Anastazja Kus to anchor Italy to gold in the medley relay in a European U18 best of 2:05.23.
Finland won two medals at the 2024 European Athletics U18 Championships including gold in the heptathlon courtesy of Enni Virjonen who scored 6151 points in the U18 variant of the discipline to win gold by over 300 points.
Virjonen is likely to face reigning world U20 champion Jana Koscak who is keen to sign off her junior career on a winning note after injury forced her to withdraw mid-competition from the heptathlon at the 2023 European Athletics U20 Championships in Jerusalem.
The Croatian is one of a handful of athletes who won gold at last year’s World Athletics U20 Championships and are still eligible for junior events this year along with France’s Meta Tumba (women’s 400m hurdles), Slovenia’s Tom Tersek (men’s javelin) and Jarno van Daalen from the Netherlands (men’s shot put).