Making the announcement, Dr Sylvia Barlag, the European Athletics Council member who chaired the six member international awards jury, said “on behalf of European Athletics, I want to thank all those who invested their time and effort to make athletics better by entering projects. After very careful consideration, the judges have arrived at a list of category winners, all of which have the potential to make a difference in our sport.”
The winning projects are:
· Coaching Category – “Monitoring Training Load in Sprint Interval Exercises” by Ari Nummela (FIN)
· Technology Category - “Motion Estimation Using Inertial Sensor Technology with Applications to Sporting Exercises” by Michael Gasser (SUI)
· Promotion Category - “Athletics 365” by Scott Grace (GBR)
· Open Category – “αactinin-3 deficiency is detrimental to 100 and 200-m Olympic sprinting performance in six European and one American cohort of elite sprinters” by Ioannis Papadimitriou (GRE)
The authors of each of the winning projects will receive a cash prize of CHF 2,000.
In addition to the four winners, the jury recognised 14 projects with certificates of Honourable Mention – four in Coaching, one in Technology, four in Promotion and seven in the Open category,
The jury decided not to name a winner or give an honourable mention in the Sustainability Category.
The criteria used to evaluate the entries were “quality” and “relevance to athletics”.
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, students and others with a good idea anywhere in Europe.
This year’s awards attracted 41 entry files with from 17 countries. Both figures are the second highest in the history of the competition.
The overall award in 2012 was won by a Norwegian team led Charlotte Svensen for their project entitled “Young Leader - To Create the Volunteers of Tomorrow.”
For more information, including a list of the members of the awards jury, click here.