European Athletics U23 Championships
03-04-2007
Source: Sportfórum.hu
Author: Károly Jocha

European Athletics U23 Championships without state subsidy

One of the large musters of this year – the European Athletics U23 Championships – will begin exactly one hundred days later in Debrecen. The organizers reported on a press conference about the state of the preparations.

The capital of ’Hajdúság’ has already given home for the eleventh world sport event since 2001. According to Mayor Lajos Kósa, the organizers have already had the necessary routine and connections for the arrangement. The organizing team already got accustomed to each other, with the managing of Mihály Orendi, the managing president of the organizing committee, sets out to do the tasks.

Debrecen does the work, which we take on, under more and more difficult circumstances as we received state subsidy for organizing sport events last time in 2002. As Mihály Orendi, leader of the competition told, Debrecen city gives 70 million Hungarian Forints as arranging and organizing subsidy, and further 20 million is available for renovation.

László Mérei, the professional director of the Hungarian Athletics Association mentioned that U23 competitions are the musters of young people grew out of junior age.  From these fields such world classes came into the field of adults like Iszinbajeva, Klift, Olsson, Zoltán Kővágó and others. The Hungarian Athletics Association plans now to enter for forty-four young talents. The interest of the Hungarian athletics is that the promising athletes who grew out of the junior, but still are not strong enough to get into the adults’ field, can have good competition chances – and possibly get a real sense of success.

The organizing committee expects two thousand and five hundred official accreditations for the U23 European Championships. The preliminary budget of the continent competition, due between 12-15 July, is 215 million Hungarian Forints.