The Meeting Ciutat de Barcelona, the best of Spain in 2008
The Meeting Ciutat de Barcelona, which last Saturday celebrated its fourteenth edition in the Olympic Stadium Lluís Companys, has reached the first position amongst all the athletics events celebrated in Spain so far. The Meeting that was attended by 7000 people got an amount of 83.265 points, just 15 points over the one celebrated in Madrid, which had to be held in Moratalaz because the Vallehermoso Stadium is in the middle of its refurbishment process.
83.265 points is a considerable amount. This number is the result of the addition of the results of all its participants (officially there are 333 coming from 51 countries). This punctuation and the ranking list that is done are based on the different athletics event’s results that help to classify the cities in the different categories of European Athletics.
Barcelona’s Meeting has been included in the Permit Meeting group of the European Athletics this year but there is a superior category, the Premium Meeting. Obviously, the Meeting is expected to reach that level. Over all of these events there are the ones that belong to the International Athletics Federation (IAAF). Madrid’s Meeting belong to this category which curiously this year has got a lower punctuation than Barcelona’s one.
The classification of the best Spanish athletics events is the following:
Barcelona, 83.265 points
Madrid, 83.250 points
Zaragoza, 81.404 points
Jerez, 78.885 points
Huelva, 77.347 points
During the Meeting there were set four event’s records, five stadium’s records and two national ones. The Spanish record was set by Marta Domínguez in the 3000m Steeplechase and so was the Sudan’s record in the same race. It is very important to emphasize the five records set in the stadium. They are: the 5000m (Moses Masai), Discus Throwing (Mario Pestano), 5000m women (Peninah Chepchumba), Pole Vault women (Lacy Janson) and Triple Jump women (Francoise Mbango). Masai improved the former record whose holder was Dieter Baumann since the Olympic Games in Barcelona and Pestano improved the one defended by Virgilius Alenka since the year 2000.
Once known all the points got by the different Meetings celebrated all around Europe, the European Athletics will set the final classification.
According to the 2008 calendar the following meetings are missing:
3 August, Karelia Games (Lappeenranta, Finland)
31 August, Meeting Ciita de Padova (Padova, Italia)
3 September, Riga Cup 2008 (Riga, Latvia)
7 September, The Athletic Bridge 2008 (Dubnica nad Vahom, Slovakia)
The date of the celebration of the following Meeting Ciutat de Barcelona is already known: 25 July 2009.
