Excitement is starting to build around Europe as one of the biggest events of the inline racing season starts in the Southern Hungarian city of Szeged on te 23rd of July. Due to the euro-zone debt crisis and many government agencies tightening their budgets, funding became difficult or impossible to find, and there was much debate throughout the early part of the season about where this year’s European Championships were going to be held. Thankfully the team in Hungary stood up and have put together an event they can be proud of.

The track is a little short than the regular 200m. So racing on a 170m will create close and technical racing and positioning will become very important. 

Four categories will be held at the same time, cadet, Junior B, Junior A, and of course Senior. While we won’t go into serious detail on all of them we will look at some of the stand out favourites in some of them:

Senior Men Sprint-

It will be a tough battle and its difficult to split these guys, but expect- 

 

Isseba Fernandez (ESP), Michel Mulder (NL), Andrea Angeletti (ITA) Nicolas Pelloquin (FRA), and of course Vi-G13′s Etienne Ramali (DE) to be all hovering around the podium. It will be who can put down the cleanest run on the day.

Senior Men Long Distance-

The undisputed favourite for the past several seasons has to be PS/Matter’s own Bart Swings (BE), any time the racing gets tough he’s in the front. While he’s publicly said Euro’s isn’t a top priority for him this season, its hard to imagine him far away from the head of affairs. His main challenges will come from two directions, firstly Fabio Francolini (ITA) will be looking to take advantage of any sign of weakness of Bart, secondly the strongest team will be the French which include’s Ewen Fernandez and Alexis Contin. So while these guys will be doing battle suprises could be thrown up from Crispijn Ariens (NL) and PS/Matter’s Felix Rijhnen (DE).

Senior Women Sprints-

Its probably going to be a two country battle in the sprints which will include Erika Zanetti (ITA) and then the German duo of Jana Gegner and PS/Matter’s Laethisia Schimek. Erika has been the undisputed Queen of European sprinting over the past several seasons, but this year she could face her toughest challenges yet, with an ever strengthening German team. the 1,000m is always where sprinters and long distance skaters meet and this year will be no different, Manon Kamminga (NL) will be looking to defend her title again, but the likes of Sabine Berg (DE) could form and impressive German trio that would be hard to beat.

Senior Women Long Distance-

This category is probably the hardest to pick a clear favourite, but again its going to be a close battle between Sabine Berg and Mareike Thum from Germany against Francesca Lollobrigida (ITA) and of course its hard to look past Nathalie Barbotin Audoire who won two titles last year. Throw in some super strong Dutch skaters like Elma De Vries and Manon Kamminga and it really is going to be an open battle in Szeged.

Juniors-

While its often difficult to predict what junior skaters are going to come out on top, two noteable performers will be Livio Wenger from Swiss who is again another one who wants to time his peak for the World Champs, so will be hitting Euro’s a little under top form, and of course Kathi Rumpus (DE) who already has several Junior European titles to her name and will be looking to add to them in Szeged.