European Athletics took an important step in its strategy to ensure that athletics is at the forefront of promoting healthy lifestyles to Europeans through sport by staging the inaugural European Athletics Health and Well-Being Conference in Marseille, France, from 24 to 26 January.
Over the weekend, more than 130 representatives from 48 Member Federations took part in a series of workshops and plenary sessions to discuss how to design and deliver health and well-being programmes that can also help to increase membership bases and financial positions.
The conference featured a keynote presentation on Friday evening by Mme Roselyne Bachelot, a former French minister for Health and Sport who has been instrumental in putting public health firmly on the agenda of sports organisations in her country.
There was also a visit to a fitness and health exhibition staged for the public by the local athletics club on Saturday afternoon under sunny skies next to Marseille’s historic old port.
“The conference has been a great success,” said European Athletics President Wirz. “We really showed that our sport can and is delivering more than just a high-performance activity.
“Athletics is uniquely placed, through recreational running and walking, the expertise of our thousands of coaches and our club structure in many countries, to offer everyone opportunities that can lead to lifelong fitness and better health.”
“European Athletics’ slogan is ‘Your Sport for Life’, and we mean it.”
With European nations increasingly facing a series of public health challenges, including childhood and adult obesity and non-communicable diseases like diabetes and heart disease, attendees at the conference considered ways in which the European athletics family can help to address these problems.
One way is to work together with the federations, mass participation event organisers and others in the running industry to make recreational running an even bigger part of peoples’ lives. To this end, half of the conference participants discussed a set of standards to ensure that road races are well organised and safe in every country.
A second approach is to build on the expertise already in the sport to help people of all ages and conditions to start running or exercising in other ways. The remainder of the conference participants took part in workshops on developing strategies to make federations important actors in the health market, many sharing examples and experiences of initiatives that have increased membership numbers and led to the creation of new partnerships with sponsors and other organisations.
“Athletics has long been delivering services in this area that are not necessarily recognised and we wanted to make sure that all our Member Federations understand that it is in their interest to embrace the whole picture,” said President Wirz. “We have to convince them and others in the sport that increasing participation through services that society wants and needs is the way forward.
“If we want to convince outside partners that we have a lot to offer, we must first convince ourselves.”
Vice President Jean Gracia of France, who led the organisation of the conference, was in agreement. “I am very happy with the results,” he said. “Firstly, because of the great participation, that alone was a success, but more importantly, because we could see how much interest there is in most of the countries for the type of activities we discussed here.
“This is the start of a strategic shift in thinking about what athletics clubs and federations can offer society. We are not pushing to replace the high-performance part of our sport, that is fundamental to who we are as a sport, but we want to develop activities that compliment it by increasing participation and the relevance of athletics to society.”