Written by Peter Kennedy on 23 May 2016
The EMA Non-Stadia Championships were looking for a way to handle validation efficiently and to get results onto the web but the decision to use Reportlab was only taken a few days before entries closed, with one month to go to the championships. Reportlab, led by Andy Robinson, were well prepared to step into the breach at the last minute, based on the work done they had been doing for the BMAF OpenTrack membership management and competition entry system and the wider development of technology and data for grassroots athletics using the Finodex project funding they had from the European community.
By the time it came for the start of the championships almost all of the countries had validated their athletes including for the GB team a full re-fresh of the proof of nationality and date of birth for everyone. Our thanks to the British athletes for their cooperation in doing this so promptly.
During the three days of the championships provisional results were posted on the OpenTrack website but the so-called final results still contained anomalies due to incorrect recording of the results, which will have to be resolved. Questions should be addressed to the LOC via emacns2016@gmail.com. You can find the results and medals table via the Opentrack EMACNS site.
The GB team of 98 competitors achieved fourth place overall with 19 gold, 14 silver and 14 bronze medals, proportionate to their team size second only to Germany. More than half of the team came home with a medal, with Clare Elms and Ros Tabor gaining 5 each.