Still three weeks to go, but the 21st European Masters Athletics Championships, which will be held from 5 to 15 September in Jesolo, Caorle and Eraclea, Italy, have already set the first record. Registration officially closed on August 3rd and the number of participants has no precedent in the history of the event. More than 5,000 athletes are expected to compete in the province of Venice, in fact 5,039, among them 4,926 from European countries – about one fifth are Italians – and 113 will come from non-European countries and obviously cannot compete for continental titles. On the other hand, 8318 are the entries: most of the athletes will took part in more than one competition, many will even make three.
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The countries will be 61 in total, 43 European and 18 from other continents, even Hong Kong and India, Jamaica and the United States, Mexico and South Africa. With such a high number of athletes, there had never been an EMAC event. The previous most participated edition was in Potsdam 2002, with 4385 competitors. The record of European countries instead belonged to Ljubljana 2008, with 42, and this time we went further in both cases. Technical program includes competitions in the stadiums of Jesolo, Caorle and Eraclea, but also outside stadia. Jesolo will host half marathon and 10 km race, Caorle the cross country race, Eraclea the race walking competitions.
The event has been presented in Caorle with the speeches of the mayor of Caorle, Luciano Striuli, the sports councilor of the Municipality of Jesolo, Esterina Idra, the prefectural commissioner of the Municipality of Eraclea, Giuseppe Vivola, alongside LOC president Vito Vittorio and 1980 Olympic high jump champion Sara Simeoni, representing also the Regional Committee FIDAL Veneto.
Entry list: http://www.fidal.it/risultati/2019/COD7632/Index.htm
EMAC Venice 2019 website: http://emac2019.fidalservizi.it/en/