Sligo - European Town of Sport 2014

rizzodun

As you may know, Sligo was awarded '2014 European Town of Sport'

ACES, European Capitals of Sport Association, assigns every year the recognitions of European "Capital", "City" and "Town" of Sport. The allocation of these recognitions is done by ACES, according to the principles of responsibility and ethics, being aware that sport is a factor of aggregation of the society, improvement in the quality of life, psycho-physical well-being and complete integration within social classes in a difficult situation.
ACES works with the European Commission, and above all on the initiatives presented in the "White Paper on Sport" (action point 50), thanks to the activation of the structured relationships with the most important European people practising a sport, through the collaboration with the EU Members States et through the promotion of relations in the field of sport. The Commission itself will support the future development of the initiative related to the European Capitals of Sport, which is the subject of ACES' activities.
The recognition assigned by ACES represent a good opportunity at the disposal of Local Administrations ( and the corresponding competent departments) to give an official recognition to the quality of their engagement in terms of sport on the competence territory. ACES' activities will cooperate with the ECP (European Paralympic Committee).
Then, it is exposed the basic dispositions elaborated by ACES for the yearly allocation of candidacies for the title of "European Capital of Sport", "European City of Sport" and "European Town of Sport". These dispositions, formally welcomed by the European Commission on the whole territory, set up the times, the modalities and the engagements that every Town Administration must comply with, in order to apply for the appropriate belonging category.
ACES uses an ad hoc Commission which works to support the development of the initiative of candidacy and allocation of titles of European "Capital", "City" and "Town" of Sport, and to give a larger European visibility to the sport events, based on the same founding values of the Association.

From what I gather, this is basically an award or title to show that a particular town has shown to promote and grow sport in the locality.

However, when this was announced late last year I was looking forward to hearing about a wide range of sporting events this year to promote sport in the locality, and did think that giving the title of 'European Town' would have meant events bringing competitors from other European countries to Sligo.

It was great to see the Northwest MTB Club bring a Cross Country bike race to Union Wood for the first time in years, and the Warriors run is always well organised, but from what I saw we did not have any major stand out events that would've never been hosted had it not been for this award.

So, did we sort of miss the boat on this? Was any big events just not possible due to the effort with the Fleadh and money constraints? Or, is it stupid to think that the title we were awarded for the year could have been used to bring these sort of events to the area?

AllGunsBlazing

We're not really set up for sporting events. They require proper facilities built to high spec that cost a ****load of money to construct.

Other than a fun run around the town and maybe a couple of 5 a side football games on some of the local astro pitches , after that we'd be struggling.

dingding

Events listed here.

http://sligotownofsport.ie/

Son Of A Vidic

rizzodun wrote: »

As you may know, Sligo was awarded '2014 European Town of Sport'

Nope, until you mentioned it, I didn't know this.

rizzodun

dingding wrote: »

Events listed here.

http://sligotownofsport.ie/

Thanks dingding, didn't know of this website, but looking at it most of these events are local and not much that would draw tourists here or others from abroad to compete. There's no denying Sligo is a good place for sport but this year in particular I would've thought they would push for some European events.

I'll have a proper look through the site after work, maybe there are some events I have missed.

Scarlet42

Sligo Tri Club - Olympic Triathlon had to be canceled because of the Garda resources at the fleadh could not be spared