27th October 2011 10:16
President Hansjörg Wirz will give the first two European Athletics Coaching Awards at the European Athletics Awards Night presented by Mondo in Arona, Spain, on 15 October 2011. Valentina Eiduka (LAT) and Jacques Borlée (BEL) will receive their awards as the representatives of the 84 award winners from 26 countries.
The annual awards were launched earlier this year and are the centrepiece of European Athletics’ strategy to promote the development of coaching.
The remainder of the winners will receive their awards in national ceremonies organised by their federations.
In 2010, European Athletics created a Coaching Roll of Honour to recognise those coaches whose athletes had won a gold medal at the European Athletics Championships in Barcelona. All coaches on the original Roll of Honour, plus any coach whose athlete wins a European Athletics senior championship in the future and is confirmed by the athlete’s federation, will automatically receive the Coaching Award.
In addition, each federation has been invited to nominate one male and one female coach per year for the award based on the criteria “excellence in coaching”. Fifteen federations nominated coaches this year.
“We felt that a coaching award best honours the recipients and expresses European Athletics’ appreciation for the contributions of coaches working with high-performance athletes and in other, equally important but less high-profile areas of the sport”, said President Wirz.
Eiduka and Borlée were selected after consideration of all 84 winners by a jury led by European Athletics Council member Frank Hensel. Other members of the jury for the years 2012-2015 are Michaela Ingberg, co-chair of the European Athletics Athlete’s Commission; Vadim Zelichenok, European Atheltics Council member; and Frank Dick, President of the European Athletics Coaches Association.
For more information on the European Athletics Coaching Awards visit www.european-athletics.org/european-athletics-coaching-awards.html.