Straight after the Portuguese experience of Athtech in 25 deg C we flew to Vilnius for the European Athletics Congress. This biennial event is where the 51 federations meet to plan the next few years and discuss where the sport is going. We were assured the city is beautiful, but the 72 hours of continuous rain meant we didn’t see too much of it.
Inside the convention centre we spoke in a 3 hour session on data with Nicolas, EA’s head of technology and Mirko the statistician from Tilastopaja. The session started with a warm introduction from Executive Board Member, Dobromir Karamarinov (pictured below), and we covered Data Capture, Federation Management and Competition Management. We even had time for an indoor cross country race to show off our timing solutions. The animation of the World Championships high jump opened people’s eyes to what can be done to bring field events alive.
Dobromir opening the Data session in Vilnius
After the presentation we had several one to one meetings with the federations and attended the Congress Dinner with the stars of European and International Athletics from Lord Coe down.