Athlete of the SPAR European Cup Award
| 18.06.2008
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Craig Pickering (GBR) and Christine Obergfall (GER) with
the Athlete of the SPAR European Cup Awards last year.
Photo by Picture Alliance.
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The prestigious Athlete of the SPAR European Cup Award will be presented for the fourth and final time in Annecy this weekend.
The award is intended to recognise a supreme effort or performance that went beyond expectations and will be awarded to the male and female athlete who is deemed to have risen to the occasion and made an outstanding contribution to their team's performance.
The winning athletes will be announced just before the final relay events on a TV graphic and on the big screen in the stadium; they will then be presented with a trophy by European Athletics President Hansjörg Wirz just before the winning teams are presented with the SPAR European Cup.
The winners will be selected by a panel of judges made up of former World and European 400m Hurdles Champion, Stéphane Diagana (FRA) who is now a consultant for French television; well known Eurosport commentator and former European 5,000m medallist Tim Hutchings (GBR); sports journalist with Corriere dello Sport Franco Fava (ITA); leading athletics statistician Mark Butler (GBR); and European Athletics Communications Manager Pierce O'Callaghan (IRL).
The 2005 winners of the Athlete of the SPAR European Cup award were Italian Javelin thrower Francesco Pignata and French sprinter Christine Arron, in 2006 it was the turn of Ukrainian Middle Distance star Ivan Heshko and Polish Javelin specialist Barbara Madejczyk, while Britain's sprint star Craig Pickering and Germany's European Javelin record holder Christina Obergfoll took this prestigious honour last year.
This will be a particularly auspicious occasion as it will be the last ever presentation of the Athlete of the SPAR European Cup Award, and with such an outstanding selection of athletes getting ready to compete for their country, it should be a closely fought battle to take this top award.
