When the 31 winners of the 2001 European Athletics Women’s Leadership Award receive their prize in national ceremonies during the coming weeks they will be presented with a signed lithograph created by Marjolaine Perreten, a student at Lausanne's Ecole Romande d'arts et de Communication (ERACOM).
The first copy of the lithograph was given by European Athletics President Hansjörg Wirz to Anni Kirvesniemi-Bosco of Finland, who represented the other winners at the European Athletics Awards Night presented by MONDO in Arona, Spain, on 15 October.
Marjolaine's dynamic depiction of athletic disciplines was chosen from 14 proposals submitted by ERACOM students.
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'Our idea is to recognise each national winner with the same piece of art, which will symbolically link the winners in an elite club or network that we hope will be active into the future,' says Christian Milz, Director General of European Athletics.
20-year-old Marjolaine comes from a family of artists and grew up the Swiss village of Savigny near Lausanne. With no background in sports, she drew inspiration from her mother Sylvie who is a dance trainer and her musician father Alain.
“I am not very well versed with sports, but my whole family is into music and dance,” she explained.
“When I heard about this competition and I came across the motto of European Athletics – Your Sport for Life it automatically clicked that every movement in athletics is somehow an extension of our movements in daily life. And I drew parallels between athletics movement and dance movements.”
Speaking of her career plans Marjolaine said: 'The project has been a motivation for all the participating students and having my painting selected as the prize by European Athletics is a great honour for me.”
This is the biggest recognition of my life so far and I am sure this is going to give me a lot of confidence in pursuing my goal of creating beautiful animations and illustrations for children.'