When the Ukraine’s Bohdan Bondarenko and Zuzana Hejnova of the Czech Republic were presented as European Athletes of the Year at the European Athletics Awards Night in Tallinn last October, it was deserved recognition for their fine performances and consistency over the course of the 2013 season.
Yet the athletes were not the only ones honoured for their contributions to the sport in the Estonian capital that evening.
The names Mirjana Stojanovic and Eva Kunigas were not, perhaps, as instantly recognisable to the assembled audience as the World Championships gold medallists, but their considerable achievements and decades of service to athletics were recognised as being of equal importance.
Mirjana, from Serbia, and Eva, from Estonia, were representing 26 women from across Europe named as winners of 2013 European Athletics Women’s Leadership Awards, the biennial prize that is the centrepiece of European Athletics' strategy to promote the development of women leaders and gender equity in the sport.
While their national federations selected both women for their work, their examples of leadership and their embodiment of other values in athletics, the roles of Mirjana and Eva within the sport differ completely.
Mirjana is the Serbian National Head Coach for Sprints and Hurdles and over a career spanning decades she has guided some of the brightest talents that the Balkans state has produced.
The year 2013 was a high-water mark, with her charge, the 400m hurdler Emir Bekric, winning the European U23 title and then going on to break the Serbian national record in taking the bronze medal at the senior World Championships in Moscow. It was fitting, then, that Mirjana was recognised at the same awards ceremony at which he received the European Athletics Rising Star award.
Mirjana personifies the Women’s Leadership Awards, demonstrating precisely how women can succeed in an area of the sport, high-performance coaching, traditionally seen as the province of men. Her success, as she herself acknowledges, is an example to female coaches everywhere with aspirations to take senior leadership roles.
While Mirjana spends her time focusing on assisting others to achieve elite performances, Eva’s contribution involves working at the opposite end of the sport, the equally important grassroots level.
Having studied physical education at Tartu University, Eva started her coaching career at the Parnu Sports School before changes in the structure of sport in Estonia led to her, with the help of colleagues, establishing her own organisation, the Parnu Track and Field Club, where she occupies multiple leadership roles alongside her coaching duties.
The European Athletics Women’s Leadership award is not the first time that Eva’s efforts have been recognised – she received the Estonian Athletics Association Junior Coach of the Year award in 1995.
It is her holistic approach and inclusive philosophy when working with young athletes that mark her out as special. For Eva, it is not enough for her club to simply produce good athletes; she sees it as her responsibility to mentor children and help them become good people, too.
Like Mirjana and Eva, all the 26 winners in 2013 are role models showing that women can and do make an equal contribution to the development of athletics.
To celebrate their achievements, all the winners received a certificate and a signed copy of an original print created by Swiss artist Marjolaine Perreten together with a certificate from European Athletics. Their prizes are given in ceremonies organised by their national athletics federations.
In 2014, feature profiles of the winners will be published regularly on the European Athletics website, starting with Mirjana.
In addition to its biennial awards, European Athletics demonstrates its commitment to promoting women leaders through its Future Women Leaders scholarship programme. While the awards recognise and celebrates the achievements and careers already given to the sport, the scholarship programme aims to assist young women identified by their national federations as having the potential to become leaders in the future.
The year-long programme includes participation seminars, conferences and other networking events, where the recipients can learn from mentors and each other and develop their leadership skills.
The 2013 scholarship recipients are Yana Kasova of Bulgaria, Nanna Brandt of Denmark, and Melissa Robertson of Great Britain. Their profiles and reports on their programme will also be published in the New Year.