Stuart Weir is our European senior author, and that is the intro to a collection on the 2023 European Staff Championships.
The European Groups Championship
The European Groups Championship is a straightforward idea. Every European Nation enters one athlete in every self-discipline, and group factors are awarded in response to the place athletes end of their particular person occasions. The occasion has advanced through the years from separate males’s and ladies’s to a mixed competitors which is now’s now contested in three divisions.
This can be my fifth time attending the occasion. Poland is (double) defending champions, having gained in 2021 and 2019. Germany gained in 2013, 2015, and 2017. GB’s finest current end was third in 2021. Successful the competitors displays not simply the power in depth of the nation’s group but in addition the nation’s capability to influence the highest athletes to participate, as there isn’t a prize cash. Ekaterina Stefanidi instructed me in 2019 that she loved representing her nation, however “I’m knowledgeable athlete, and I ought to be paid.” Exhausting to argue with that view. That Poland is internet hosting the occasion for a 3rd time in 4 years and has gained the earlier 2 is a sign that Polish Athletics takes the competitors severely and that Polish athletes help it, undoubtedly delighted to have the prospect to compete in entrance of a house and vociferous crowd.
The 2023 Poland group contains two particular person European champions from Munich final 12 months in Pia Skrzyszowska (100m hurdles) and Wojciech Nowicki (hammer). Different world-class performers embrace Femke Bol, Miltiadis Tentoglou, Simon Ehammer, Pedro Pichardo,
In whole, 11 particular person European champions from Munich can be competing in Silesia. Different European champions in motion on the boys’s aspect embrace Italy’s Yemaneberhan Crippa (5000m), Finland’s Topi Raitanen (3000m steeplechase), Portugal’s (triple soar), Jessica Schilder and Wilma Murto.
The 16 international locations within the first division are Poland, Italy, Nice Britain & NI, Germany, Spain, France, Portugal, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Finland, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, and Norway.
Division 1 is a three-day occasion, Friday to Sunday.
