Roch Krukowski crowned EKAG with a world-class javelin throw!!

The 17th edition of EKAG 2022 is now history, and a record number of more than one thousand seven hundred participants from fifteen European countries are at home by now—or on their way home. So I must begin the final evaluation with a deep bow for the incredible work done by the officials, the technical crew, and the support team of the competition office led by David Uhlíř. They delivered exceptionally high-quality work over three days, and thanks to them everything ran at a very high standard and smoothly, with only minimal issues—within such a huge event there were only a tiny number of truly negligible problems. So, once again, a big thank-you to all of you who took part in organizing the largest youth athletics meet in the world.

The reward for the entire organizing team was, of course, the performances and commitment of the participants. The duels and performances were truly incredible, with the outstanding highlight being the superb result by Polish representative Roch Krukowski, who, coached by his father, produced an amazing 76.71 m, significantly improved the Polish national record, and moved into second place in the all-time world rankings. Another national record was set in Malta, where Matthew Azopardi (born 2009) ran 2:07.54 over 800 m. Meet records were broken four times, mainly thanks to the Polish participants—of course due to Krukowski’s javelin, and twice in the relays: in the 4×300 m mixed by Wawel Krakow and in the 4×60 m by Zwiazek Malopolski. The fourth meet record was added in the 800 m by Maltese representative Matthew Azopardi.

Without doubt, the 17th edition will go down in EKAG history for the record number of participants and for an absolutely incredible opening ceremony, where, completely spontaneously, all the participants started dancing to the beat led by the young men from the group Yes Brothers.

I am already thinking about the 2023 edition, where some limits on the number of starters in events will certainly be introduced.

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