European Athletics will announce the nominees for the annual men’s and women’s European Athletes of the Year and Rising Star awards across social media on Thursday and Friday.
Ten athletes have been nominated in each category based on their performances achieved since January 2019 in major European Athletics or IAAF competitions, principally the Glasgow 2019 European Athletics Indoor Championships, IAAF World Athletics Championships Doha 2019 and European Athletics U23 and U20 Championships.
Athletes who have served a doping suspension of two years or longer are ineligible for nomination.
European Athletics will announce the men’s and women’s Rising Star nominees across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram on Thursday and the ten nominees for the men’s and women’s European Athletes of the Year award on Friday. Voting will close at 12:00pm CET on Friday 18 October.
The social media vote accounts for one-quarter of the overall vote. The media vote, the Member Federation vote and the European Athletics Expert Panel vote each accounts for one-quarter of the vote as well.
Fans can cast their vote on social media by retweeting the graphic of the athlete on Twitter, by liking the graphic on Instagram or by liking or sharing the corresponding graphic on Facebook. One retweet, like or share accounts to one vote but please note that any likes cast on shared posts on Facebook will not be counted.
The votes across all three platforms will be combined to determine the outcome of the social media vote. The three short-listed finalists in each category will then be announced across social media based on the combined results of the vote.
The winners will be crowned and presented with their Golden Tracks trophies at the Golden Tracks award ceremony which will take place in Tallinn, Estonia on Saturday 26 October in conjunction with the 2019 European Athletics Convention.
Last year’s European Athletes of the Year were France’s world decathlon record-holder Kevin Mayer and treble European sprint champion Dina Asher-Smith from Great Britain. Mayer became the first decathlete to win the title since Czech Republic’s Tomas Dvorak in 1999 and Asher-Smith became the fourth British winner of the women’s award.
European 100m hurdles champion Elvira Herman was crowned women’s Rising Star winner while the men’s award was jointly won by European 1500m and 5000m champion Jakob Ingebrigtsen from Norway and European pole vault champion Armand Duplantis from Sweden.
The European Athlete of the Year awards were inaugurated in 1993 to honour Europe’s outstanding athletes and the Rising Star awards came into being in 2007 to recognise exceptional emerging talents.