European Athletics to stream live Velenje 2011 SPAR European Cross Country Championships
5 December 2011. Source: EAA. (IKKOSPORTS) - European Athletics is pleased to announce that it will stream live the Velenje 2011 SPAR European Cross Country Championships with English-language commentary on Sunday 11 December.
Cross country fans around the world will be able to click through to the live stream link from the European Athletics website homepage (www.european-athletics.org) and watch the championships live in their entirety.
English commentary will add colour to the live action throughout all six races in the Slovenian city.
The Opening Ceremony will be broadcast from 09:30 GMT with the first race to start at 09:45.
Athletes' post-race interviews will be uploaded to the European Athletics YouTube site (www.youtube.com/EuropeanAthletics throughout the day of the event.
Broadcast intentions from international broadcasters are still coming in ahead of the 18th edition of the SPAR European Cross Country Championships and will be published by European Athletics later in the week.
Final entries
In other Velenje 2011 news, it looks highly likely there will be some records set on Sunday.
After the deadline for final entries closed at midnight on Thursday 1 December, 489 athletes had been registered (521 including reserves athletes) by 33 Member Federations to compete at this year's championships.
The current record number of competitors is the 468 athletes that started at the 2006, 2008 and 2010 SPAR European Cross Country Championships.
The breakdown of entries for the individual races in Velenje is: senior men 77, senior women 57, under 23 Men 101, under 23 women 47, junior men 113 and junior women 94.
This means that there could be a record number of starters in no less than three races: the under 23 men's race as well as the junior men's and women's races.
The records for the senior races are 106 and 80 which were set at the second edition of the Championships in 1995, and in the latter case equalled in 2002. However, this was before the advent of the under 23 races in 2006; when many runners who now compete in this category would have competed for their country as seniors.
The highest number of countries to participate in the SPAR European Cross Country Championships were the 34 nations that made the trip to the town of Albufeira on Portugal's Algarve coast last year.
The final entries can be found here: http://www.european-athletics.org/files/exch/EXCH_2011_Final_Entries.pdf