The historical city of Krakow is preparing to welcome the best athletes from around Europe for the 3rd edition of the European Games. With 50 days to go, preparations by the Local Organising Committee to host 48 European National Olympic Committees (NOC) are heavily underway.

A total of 5000 athletes across 28 sports will be competing for places on the podium and in some sports, a quota place for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. 12 of the sports are being contested as part of the European Championships.

For the first time in the history of the European Games and a major multi-sport event, a turnkey solution for Sport Entries has been developed to support the registration of athletes to the games and to ensure that only eligible athletes compete. IGNITX is humbled to partner with the Local Organising Committee (LOC) Sports department and the European Olympic Committees (EOC) to initiate and implement this solution which is cost-effective and sustainable.

Traditionally, members of the Sport Entries team in a multi-sport event have always been onsite in the host city. With the evolution of working styles and improvement of online tools – due to innovations founded during the pandemic – IGNITX is providing a fully staffed experienced Sport Entries team which works remotely from all around the world.

The team is led by Viktoria Kiss who is based in Vienna, Austria and has worked in the area of Registration, Sport Entries and Accreditation for the past 6 years. Viktoria was the Accreditation and Sport Entries Manager for European NOCs in the Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games and the Accreditation and Sport Entries Manager in the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games. She was also the Registration and Sport Entries Expert for the Sarajevo 2019 European Winter Youth Olympic Festival and was engaged by IGNITX to provide her services at the Northern Marianas 2022 Pacific Mini Games and Berlin 2023 Special Olympics World Games.

The other 4 members of the Sport Entries team are Marlene Binder who is based in Buenos Aires, Argentina; Noelia Carrancio in Montevideo, Uruguay; Ana Stratu who is based in Seoul, Korea; and Gerda Muldaryte from Birmingham, UK. Marlene and Noelia worked in the Accreditation and Sport Entries Team in Buenos Aires 2018 Youth Olympic Games and were part of the Registration Team for the Boxing Road to Tokyo Qualification Events. Ana Stratu, an ex-national Karate athlete for Moldova, was the Sport Entries Manager in the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games where Gerda was working in the Accreditation department.

IGNITX was engaged to provide our services in January. The collective experience and knowledge of the team proved to be effective with the short time that was needed to understand the specificities of the qualification systems and the processes that needed to be implemented to ensure that eligible athletes are properly registered to the games.

Find out more about what a Sport Entries team does from our “What is Sport Entries” episode.

The team is now preparing for the opening of the online Sport Entries system on 16 May and is in close communication with the Accreditation and NOC Relations team as the first phase of the Delegation Registration Process for NOCs is coming to a close.

In the last week of March, Gerda and our Director of Operations, Neo, made a working onsite visit to the LOC Headquarters in Krakow and had meetings and workshops with EOC and relevant functional area representatives.