PoleVaultPower.com

Women:
http://www.european-athletics.org/compe ... 42&intcmp=[#]-schline-result

Men:
http://www.european-athletics.org/compe ... 39&intcmp=[#]-schline-result

Since when is Russia in Europe?

Russia is everywhere.... They are only one land purchase away from being able to compete in the PanAm Games.

Israel is in the European League too. someone tried to explain it to me once. Something about attempting to avoid political tensions between some of these countries at an athletics level

[rant]
Politics, and jokes aside, Russia is quite rightly in Europe, based on geography. Moscow is in Europe, and (I'm guessing) the majority of the Russian population is still in Europe - not Asia (despite the breakup of the USSR). The so-called boundary between Europe and Asia is the Ural Mountain range, down to the Caspian Sea.

Israel is in the MidEast (geographically considered part of Asia, but rather distant from nations in Southeast Asia), so from a sports competition point of view, I can see how they have more affinity to Europe (and North Africa) than Asia - even just from a travel cost perspective. So I doubt it's just politics.

The European Union also includes some countries near the Mideast and Caspian Sea, again based on proximity and "trading partners" more than taking the word "Europe" literally and drawing artificial borders around the so-called continent of Europe.

Even from a purely geographic perspective, Europe is only half of Eurasia - a single continent. So go figure how you define a continent.

From a sports perspective, I think we need to think beyond physical continents and politics, and encourage friendly competition with our neighbours as well as those that we have special affinities with. This is why IMHO, Pan-Am Games, Oceania / Pacific Games, and Commonwealth Games, for example, are good.

Ditto European Championships.
[/rant]

Kirk

Churandy Martina is from Curaçao the Caribbean. He must also participate in the European Championship. It's a part of the Netherlands.