European Athletics President’s Welcome Message Pacé 2022
I am very pleased to welcome everyone to the European 10,000m Cup here in Pacé, which returns to France after a hiatus of 12 years.
In 2010, we were on the Mediterranean coast in Marseille. This year – as well as for 2023 and 2024 as Pacé will stage the Cup for three consecutive editions.
2022 will witness the silver anniversary edition of the Cup, with it having been staged annually with the exception of the pandemic year of 2020, and it has become a very important fixture on the international calendar for European Athletics.
The list of winners since the Cup was inaugurated in 1997, albeit under a different name back then, includes a number of world and Olympic champions and medallists let alone many athletes who have climbed the podium on a continental stage.
This roll of honour alone demonstrates the Cup’s quality and shows how prestigious this event is in the eyes of Europe’s leading distance runners. In addition to the individual and team honours at stake – with hosts France defending their men’s individual and team titles they won 12 months ago – this year’s races will also provide European distance runners with one of the best chances of achieving a qualifying time, if they do not have it already, for the World Athletics Championships and European Athletics Championships in the coming months.
Consequently, I expect some high-quality races and fields of highly motivated runners looking to make their mark.
If the races this year emulate their counterparts from 12 months ago in Birmingham – when we had 10 men running under 28 minutes with eight setting personal bests and four women under 32 minutes with six of the top 10 setting personal bests – then we will certainly have had a night to remember. European Athletics would like to offer a big thank you to the French athletics federation – Fédération Française d'Athlétisme – the Local Organising Committee, the various regional and local public authorities who have generously supported this event, the commercial partners and, of course, all the officials and volunteers involved in the event.
Dobromir Karamarinov European Athletics President
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