The European Games in Kraków are more important than ever. It’s about Olympic qualifications and European championships in many sports – 287 Germans are at the start.
Ten months after the European Championships in Munich, Poland will host the European Games with Kraków from Wednesday (June 21, 2023) to July 2nd.
The multi-sport event is particularly attractive due to the qualification opportunities for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris in numerous sports and twelve European title fights this year. The German Olympic Sports Confederation has nominated 287 athletes.
What are the European Games?
In 2012, the European Olympic Committees decided to establish a major continental sporting event, analogous to the Asian Games or Pan-American Games. The first venues were Baku in Azerbaijan in 2015 and Minsk in Belarus in 2019. They compete with the European Championships, which were last held in Munich in August 2022. The latter are organized by the European Championships Management in cooperation with the European television association EBU.
Where are the competitions held?
The heart of the European Games with twelve days of competition is Kraków, where the winners are determined in eleven sports alone. The Polish cities of Chorzow, Krzeszowice, Tarnow, Krynica-Zdroj, Zakopane, Nowy Tark, Rzeszow, Wroclaw, Nowy Sacz, Oswiecim, Bielsko-Biala and Myslenice are other locations.
Will the European Games be on TV?
ARD, ZDF and Eurosport own the rights to the European games, but will only report live on TV to a manageable extent. For example, on the first weekend of the games, ZDF will show live images of the European Athletics Team Championships as part of its sports programs. However, all competitions and medal decisions can be followed live via the European Games TV streaming platform.
How important are the European Games?
The European Games are an important stage on the way to next year’s Olympic Games in Paris. 18 Olympic sports with 19 disciplines offer the chance to fight for quota or ranking list points. In addition, European championship titles are awarded simultaneously in eleven sports: namely in badminton, fencing, judo, canoeing (slalom, sprint), athletics, modern pentathlon, cycling (BMX/MTB), swimming (synchronized swimming, diving), taekwondo, table tennis and triathlon.
How big is the German team?
The German Olympic Sports Confederation has nominated 287 athletes. More than the first editions. Team D competes in 27 of a total of 29 sports and disciplines: 3×3 basketball, 7-a-side rugby, badminton, beach handball, BMX freestyle, archery, boxing, breaking, fencing, judo, canoe racing, canoe slalom, karate, kickboxing, Modern Pentathlon, Mountain Bike, Muay Thai, Padel, Shooting, Ski Jumping, Sport Climbing, Synchronized Swimming, Table Tennis, Taekwondo, Teqball, Triathlon and Diving. A total of around 7,000 athletes from 48 countries are at the start in Poland.
Are athletes from Russia and Belarus allowed to start?
The athletes from Russia and Belarus are excluded from the European Games because of the war of aggression against Ukraine. This was decided by the European Olympic Committees, although the International Olympic Committee had recommended that athletes from both countries return to international competitions.
What controversies are there?
In fencing in particular, there was a lot of fuss due to the exclusion of Russians and Belarusians from the European Games. The world federation FIE, which is under strong Russian influence, decided by majority vote to re-admit athletes from Russia and Belarus as neutral athletes. The fencing competitions in Kraków were actually supposed to function as a complete European Championship. By decree, the FIE then ordered the holding of individual European championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, with only two weeks’ notice.
Is there also stress in Team D?
In the German team, the non-nomination of slalom canoeist Jasmin Schornberg causes trouble. The reason given by the DOSB was that the team world champion had not been in a corresponding NADA test pool in the past six months because she had left the national squad. However, she had provided the performance records for the European Games required by the German Canoe Association (DKV). DKV head coach Klaus Pohlen criticized “completely insensitive approach”.
Will also be non-Olympic Sports given a stage?
New trend sports outside of the Olympic program are also represented at the European Games. These include Muay Thai (a martial art from Thailand) or Teqball, which is played with a normal soccer ball on a kind of table tennis table, or Padel, a tennis-derived game. Beach handball can also be seen. The German women are European and world champions as well as World Games winners. In the “Side Events” category, hill climbs, amputee football, mountain and orienteering, chess and sumo will be presented.
Which competitions are particularly important?
In the first week, the track and field athletes deserve the attention. They are holding their European Team Championships in Chorzow near Kattowitz. For the first time at a major sporting event in summer, some of the world’s best ski jumpers will slide off the ski jump on mats in Zakopane. The three-time world champion Katharina Schmid (formerly Althaus) from Oberstdorf will also be there. Poland is one of the leading ski jumping nations in the world. The modern pentathlon will be under observation. After the scandal at the Olympics in Tokyo 2021, the German athlete Annika Zillekens (formerly Schleu) is also registered. In Tokyo, her horse had refused to jump, whereupon she wanted to bring it back to the course with crop and spurs. As a result, riding as a discipline will be held at the Summer Games in Paris for the last time.