How athletics federations can succeed in the two important areas of high-performance and participation are the central topics at the 7th edition of the European Athletics CEO Conference, which is taking place on Sunday and Monday (30-31 March) in Copenhagen, Denmark.
More than 90 representatives from all 50 European Athletics Member Federations are present at the biennial conference with presentations by two highly experienced observers of the sport, Marc Jörg, former Head of Sports Rights at the European Broadcasting Union and Patrick Magyar, CEO of the Zurich 2014 European Athletics Championships.
“The conference is traditionally a great opportunity for the federations to exchange views and learn from each other,” says Council Member Frank Hensel, who led the group preparing the conference programme. “This year we have allocated extra time for the discussion groups so that even more of this type of interaction can take place.”
According to Hensel, the programme builds on last November’s European Athletics High-Performance Conference in Frankfurt and the European Athletics Health & Well-Being Conference in Marseille in January. “On those occasions we brought together the hands-on managers of these two areas essential areas of a federation’s work to talk about practical ideas.”
“In both cases the response was very positive and now we want to see which federation leaders really want to include this work in their strategy and talk about what support they need.”
On 28 and 29 March, 12 federation leaders, all appointed in the last 24 months, took part in a pre-conference workshop led by Director General Christian Milz, which was designed to bring the participants fully up to speed on their responsibilities, the internal operations of European Athletics and key issues in the sport.
Also on the programme last weekend was the IAAF World Half Marathon Championships on Saturday 29 March, to which the conference participants were invited by the organisers, the Danish athletics federation, as VIP guests.