This year’s SPAR European Cross Country Championships will take place in the Slovak town of Samorin on 10 December and the event will be staged at the state-of-the-art x-bionic® sphere - a certified Olympic training centre and the country’s official Olympic training centre for 27 sports.
Never before has Slovakia staged this annual championships which was added to the calendar back in 1994 but the organisers can make a convincing argument that this year’s championships could be the greenest in 24 editions of the event so far.
'x-bionic® sphere was our first choice,” said Vladimir Gubricky, the Secretary General of the Slovak Athletics Federation on the choice of venue. “It is without doubt one of the largest and most modern sports facilities in Slovakia. It is well equipped for various sports and we feel it is a really honest place for an event with European significance, such as the European Cross Country Championships.”
As well as being a modern sporting facility frequented by athletes from across the globe, x-bionic® sphere prides itself on its sustainability credentials - one of the facility’s hallmarks. For instance, the facility produces green electric power from their on-site biogas power plant which is used mainly to power the x-bionic® aquatic sphere and the X-BIONIC® HOTEL- where athletes and officials alike will be staying during the championships - and a cogeneration unit based on natural gas covers the demand for heat within the resort.
The venue is also an exclusive user of mineral thermal water pumped from a well some 1400 metres below ground within the proximity of the facilities. Not only is it a source of natural healing power for the site’s planned medical spa house as certified by the Ministry of Health, it is another foremost source of heat in the resort.
The legacy of x-bionic® sphere from an environmental standpoint is far beyond standard European level and is a prime example of how sport and nature preservation can and should be synonymous.