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ATHENATHON - Strengthening the community with sport
This year - starting on Europe Day - from 9 May to 9 June 2022, the ATHENATHON took place for the second time and was a great success! ATHENATHON is an open and non-competitive sports event of all seven universities of the European University ATHENA, which aims to reach a distance of 11,000 km by doing sports together - no matter if walking, running, biking, swimming, or otherwise active.
The 11,000 km symbolise the distance between the ATHENA universities. Students, lecturers, other university members - simply everyone who wanted to participate was invited to do so. And so, 11,000 km were turned into almost 32,000 km, thus far exceeding the goal! The ATHENATHON is embedded in a broader vision of a green and climate-friendly Europe. For this reason, only zero-carbon activities were considered. Most participants this year were running, cycling, walking, or swimming. However, some kilometres were also covered by canoeing, climbing, skiing, playing tennis, skating, or rowing.
To participate in the event, participants must post the number of kilometres they have covered on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram with the event's official hashtags #move4athena or #athenathon and a screenshot of their favourite tracking app's performance as proof, or join our Strava Club: ATHENA European University. Each participant could make multiple contributions and join from anywhere in Europe and beyond! This way, people were collectively motivated to move, made new international contacts and/or substituted everyday routes with zero-emission transport.
We thank all participants and helpers from this year and are already looking forward to the ATHENATHON 2023! Will we then be able to beat the 32,000 km…?!