The Ligue Européene de Nataion (LEN), the governing body for aquatic sports in Europe, has announced a new date and location for the 2016 European Junior Open Water Championships.
The event will new be held from September 9th-11th, 2016 in Piombino, Italy: a small northern Italian town of 34,000 people near Pisa.
The new host is a poetic choice as it lies on the border between the Ligurian Sea and Tyrrhenian Sea, and historically was the second main port of the Republic of Pisa that was one of the world’s major seafaring powers in the late 10th and 11th centuries.
The city will replace the original hosts, Dunkirk, France, who were scheduled to host the event from July 16th-18th. Those dates are the same as the similarly-rescheduled and relocated Junior Open Water World Championships, which will now be in Hoorn, Netherlands.
The conflict meant that movement in the European Junior Open Water Championships was inevitable, though no information was made available as to what the reason for the change of location was.
The European Junior Open Water Championships are held every year with races in three age groups: 14-15, 16-17, and 18-19 based on the swimmers’ ages on January 1st of the year of the meet. 14-15s swim a 5km race, 16-17s swim a 7.5km race, and 18-19s swim a full Olympic-distance 10km race.
In the team relay event, each swimmer on a team of 2 males and 2 females swims a 1.25km lap of the course. In the team relay event, there are two age groups: a 14-15-16 group, and a 19 & under group, with swimmers eligible to only compete in one team relay race.