The LEN Bureau announced Thursday that Netanya, Israel will be the site of the European Short Course Championships from January 15-18, 2015. The event will be held at the recently constructed Wingate Institute, located on a 120-acre plot of land along the shores of the Mediterranean. Wingate serves at Israel’s current National Institute for Sport & Physical Education headquarters.
The European SC Championships were originally slated to begin a month earlier, however planners moved the event back to January to avoid conflict with 2014 Short Course Worlds taking place in Qatar on December, 2014. This is notable in that European SC Champs usually take place before Worlds.
The Aquatic Centre features two 50-meter competition pools, ten and eight lanes respectively, as well as a six-lane 25-meter warmup/warm down pool. The main competition pool offers a spectating capacity of 3,000, all at close-range of the deck, which will likely create a loud and boisterous atmosphere during Israel’s first major international swimming competition. The Wingate recently hosted the Israeli Winter Nationals and saw fifteen national records be taken down in addition to several new age-group records.
You can read the entire LEN press release here.
Former European SC Championship sites:
1996: Rostock, Germany
1998: Sheffield, UK
1999: Lisbon, Portugal
2000: Valencia, Spain
2001: Antwerpen, Belgium
2002: Riesa, Germany
2003: Dublin, Ireland
2004: Vienna, Austria
2005: Trieste, Italy
2006: Helsinki, Finland
2007: Debrecen, Hungary
2008: Rijeka, Croatia
2009: Istanbul, Turkey
2010: Eindhoven, Netherlands
2011: Szczecin, Poland
2012: Chartes, France
2013: Herning, Denmark