#clickyourclock named as winner of the Promotion Category in 2016 Innovation Awards
European Athletics has announced the three best in category projects for the tenth edition of the European Athletics Innovation Awards with our very own #clickyourclock named as the winner of the Promotion Category!
This is a good time to have a look at just how successful #clickyourclock was for 2016:
We had a grand total of 16,554 entries this year.
Of these, 9792 (59%) actually improved their handicap that week.
Of all the entrants, they were made up of 5706 different athletes so, on average, each athlete entered three times or every two months. You could, of course, only enter if you had actually raced or done a parkrun that week.
The competition ran for 25 weeks starting 16th March and the last date was 6th Sept.
The highest weekly entrants was 911 in the week starting 27th April.
Numbers increased from previous years, perhaps through brand recognition and perhaps because of the change in drawing the prize from the pool of all runners that had improved their handicap that week as opposed to the “highest” improvement which much favoured new runners in previous years.
Every winner claimed their prize too!
The three winning projects will now be considered for the Overall Award, which includes a prize of 10,000 Swiss francs that will be presented at the European Athletics Golden Tracks in Funchal, Portugal, on 15 October.
Making the announcement, Jean Gracia, the European Athletics Vice-President who chaired the seven member international awards jury, said “on behalf of European Athletics, I want to thank all those who invested their time and effort by submitting projects for the Awards. After very careful consideration, the judges have arrived at a list of category winners, all of which have the potential to make a difference in athletics.”
The winning projects are:
· Coaching Category: Does periodization matter? The effect of different high intensity periodization models on endurance adaptations by Øystein Sylta, Norway.
· Open Category : Thank God for Stretch Jeans -A study on "female throwers" view on body and ideal by Matilda Elfgaard , Sweden
· Promotion Category: #clickyourclock weekly competition by Geoff Wightman and Gavin Lightwood , Great Britain and Norther Ireland.
The authors of each of the winning projects will receive a cash prize of CHF 2,000.
The criteria used to evaluate the entries were “quality” and “relevance to athletics”.
The European Athletics Innovation Awards were created to encourage research and the sharing of new ideas leading to the promotion and development of the sport of athletics. The biennial competition was initiated in 1998 as the European Athletics Science Awards and is open to sport scientists, coaches, students and others with a good idea anywhere in Europe.
This year’s awards attracted 31 entry files with from 18 countries.
We look forward to letting you know if we are successful in winning the overall prize on 15 October!