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Сompetition season of 2021 successfully started - European Gymnastics President

Society Materials 11 May 2021 20:35 (UTC +04:00)
Сompetition season of 2021 successfully started - European Gymnastics President

BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 11

Trend:

Сompetition season of 2021 has successfully started, Farid Gayibov, European Gymnastics President said, Trend reports citing his statement.

"Last month, the gymnastics family was happy to enjoy the competition atmosphere we are all used to in springtime. Two European Championships are behind us.

The 9th European Championships in Artistic Gymnastics was hosted by the Swiss city of Basel on April 21-25, 2021. The number of National Federations participating in the events was the same as before the pandemic.

Our main priority at current competitions is to ensure a safe competition environment for all participants. I am confident in our successful approach due to a great deal of work invested at the preparation stage for the first Europeans held during the pandemic period in November & December 2020.

I would like to express my gratitude to the Swiss Gymnastics Federation, its Local Organising Committee, the regional authorities of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Land for their great efforts in organising this event. Strong commitment and dedication of the structures involved enabled us to overcome the difficulties we are all facing nowadays. As a result, we had excellent competitions safely delivered in accordance with the standards of the European Gymnastics, Swiss Government & World Health Organisation.

The athletes had a beautifully designed Field of Play at their disposal. A number of Federations, which did not take part in last year’s Europeans, joined the competitions this year. Evidently, not all expected stars managed to become prizewinners as we witnessed up-and-coming stars outshine the current ones. Though this is the nature of sport that makes our events especially interesting and entertaining.

The positive atmosphere at the competition venue was transmitted to the viewers who watched the events online. Every year our partner SmartScoring provides live streaming at the European Championships. Naturally, the equipment they use has a capacity aimed at certain audience range. This time, this range was wider as 1100000 people watched the live stream website on the first day of qualifications. We have this impressive number of viewers for the first time. Therefore, the quality of transmission was poor due to lack of equipment capacity. We will analyse this matter and try to find an optimal solution.

The Artistic Gymnastics European Championships was in the spotlight of TV channels as well. A high number of right holders from different countries broadcasted the events. This means that our interesting and beautiful sport discipline continues to be in popular demand.

From Basel, we set out for Sochi (RUS) to participate in the second Europeans of the month. The 27th European Championships in Trampoline, Tumbling and Double Mini-Trampoline was successfully organised on April 29 – May 2, 2021. The Europeans was planned to be held in Goteborg (SWE) in 2020 but was cancelled due to the pandemic. Therefore, the event was moved to Russia. I express my gratitude to the Trampoline Federation of Russia and the leadership of Krasnodar Krai for their willingness to host this Championships in the beautiful city of Sochi. This city hosted the 2014 Winter Olympic Games and it has a well-established sports infrastructure. The hotels were located very close to the competition venue which was very convenient. The weather was fine, and I think our participants could not imagine the better place to compete in.

The last Continental Championships in this discipline was held in 2018. In general, the last major competition in this gymnastics discipline was the FIG Trampoline Gymnastics World Cup held in Baku in February 2020. All the stars of Trampoline Gymnastics, who did not have an opportunity to perform for more than a year, demonstrated their great performances at the beautiful “Iceberg” Palace of Sports. At this Championships, we also had practically the same number of participating countries that we had before the pandemic. The events were transmitted online as well. Of course, we wish to have wider TV coverage in this discipline and we are planning to work in this direction internally within the European Gymnastics. I am confident that with joint efforts of the FIG and its Continental Unions we can achieve the level where TV will be more interested in broadcasting of Trampoline Gymnastics. I hope that we will get some results at our next event in Rimini (ITA) in a year.

I’m happy to congratulate all participants of both Championships.

The competition season of 2021 has successfully started. We still have many competitions this year. I wish our athletes in all gymnastics disciplines good luck in showing their performances," his message said.

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