ETU Media Release - May
19, 2003
ITU European Triathlon Championships - Carlsbad,
Czech Republic One month to go!
The Local Organising
Committee "Trikam" led by Martin Plecity and Petr Vladyka in
partnership with the Czech Triathlon Federation look forward to welcoming you
to Carlsbad. The preparations are now in the final stages, and the European
Triathlon Union and the organizers have resolved all outstanding issues.
The swim course is in the
Rolava Lake; the bike course will head downtown to Carlsbad from the
lake. The athletes will then join the lap course where they do 7 laps of 5 km,
with a famously difficult climb in each lap. The run course has been changed
from 2001. The athletes will only have a 100 meters uphill and equivalent
downhill instead of the 400 meters they faced in 2001. With this change, the
course became very familiar to the forthcoming Athens Olympic course.
The Czech National TV and
the Eurosport have confirmed the live coverage of the Elite races, and this
will give the opportunity to our sport to reach millions of homes during the
event weekend.
Unlike recent years the
Elite athletes will qualify directly to the final, as the new qualification
system is based on the results of the previous European Triathlon
Championships, the ITU ranking and the ETU ranking. In this changeover year the
ETU Executive Board has given the opportunity for every National Federation to
have at least one athlete on the Carlsbad start line for each race.
The European Championships
will award ITU and ETU points to the athletes. The ITU points are particularly
important with less than 12 months to go for the completion of the Olympic
qualification process.
We have the largest
ever prize money purse for a European Championships 40.000 Euro - which will be
distributed among the top 10 athletes of both the male and female races.
The complete start lists
will be available two weeks prior to the competition.
Full event details and
schedule are available on www.etu-triathlon.org
and www.carlsbad.cz
For further information
please contact:
European Triathlon Union,
Secretary General: Gergely Markus
Email: marge@mail.datanet.hu
Phone: +30 697 344 6551 or
+36 20 9366 219
Fax: +30 210 699 4545