{"id":1850,"date":"2022-04-14T09:07:09","date_gmt":"2022-04-14T09:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/2022\/04\/14\/diamonds-made-in-switzerland\/"},"modified":"2022-04-14T09:07:09","modified_gmt":"2022-04-14T09:07:09","slug":"diamonds-made-in-switzerland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/diamonds-made-in-switzerland\/","title":{"rendered":"Diamonds made in Switzerland"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>From the world indoor championships (18 to 20 March) to Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich (7 and 8 September) \u2013 Swiss athletes apparently plan to inspire us all again this year. And according to Co-Meeting Directors Andreas Hediger and Christoph Joho, with role models like Mujinga Kambundji, a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of young talent participating in UBS Kids Cup events, and pioneering work on a high performance level, the \u201cRoad to Weltklasse\u201d is clear.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>Fourth in the world indoor championship medal count<\/strong><br \/> Three medals in three days: 60m world champion Mujinga Kambundji, as well as silver medallist Lo\u00efc Gasch (high jump) and Simon Ehammer (heptathlon) made history in Belgrade (SER) last month. Swiss athletes returned home with a record medal haul. In addition, three athletes, including Angelica Moser (4th\/pole vault), Andri Oberholzer (5th\/heptathlon), and Ditaji Kambundji (8th\/60m hurdles), placed in the top eight. Their results took the Swiss team to a historic fourth place in the medal count for the championships which included 129 teams this year.<\/p>\n<p> <strong>Positive trend continues<\/strong><br \/> \u201cFourth in the medal table is, quite literally, a world-class result,\u201d Andreas Hediger commented. To the Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich Co-Meeting Director, these most recent medals confirm that \u201cthe years of commitment of Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich, Swiss Athletics, and main partner UBS pays off and that the positive trend of recent years continues.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><strong>Epic summer ahead<\/strong><br \/> The Swiss top athletes are all preparing their upcoming outdoor season in various training camps. If they manage to keep up the momentum, fans are in for an epic summer. To start with, there are the national championships in Zurich (Letzigrund Stadium). After that, our stars will travel to the world championships in Eugene (USA), the European championships to be held in Munich (GER), and to the 14 meetings of the global Wanda Diamond League series which will culminate in a two-day final highlight at Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich on 7 and 8 September.<\/p>\n<p><strong>A larger team of stars than 20 years ago<\/strong><br \/> Switzerland has always produced exceptionally skilled competitors in the world of athletics, including world championship bronze medallists Anita Weyermann (1997) and Marcel Schelbert (1999), for instance, or Andr\u00e9 Bucher (2001 world champion). But imagining not one but two women taking on the world\u2019s best sprinters in the 100m Olympic final together while also fighting for medals in the 4x100m would have been hard to picture 20 years ago. Just as hard as to imagine watching as many as 14 local athletes compete in the international programme of Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich, as was the case in 2021. Eight of them had qualified by ways of collecting points instead of using a wild card for their respective Diamond League final events. The scenario underlined both the current level of performance and the athletes\u2019 mindsets. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Promoting athletics in all kinds of ways<\/strong><br \/> \u201cNational stars who capture the hearts of home crowds are essential, even for major international events such as Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich,\u201d Andreas Hediger explained. Therefore, promoting Switzerland\u2019s athletics movement in \u201call kinds of ways\u201d is one of the main purposes of Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich and its support association (VfG\/LCZ).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Supporting talents and stars<\/strong><br \/> The organisation\u2019s efforts helped build a significantly higher number of athletes competing at top level following the 2014 European championships in Zurich. The UBS Kids Cup, the largest and most important event series for young talents in the country, has played an important role in the success story. Launched in 2011, the Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich and Swiss Athletics initiative which is supported by UBS has motivated more than a million children and young adults to start running, jumping and throwing.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Generation UBS Kids Cup<\/strong><br \/> This enormous reservoir of talents represents the basis for the international success of young athletes. In the past year alone, former UBS Kids Cup participants won 12 medals at world and European U-20 and U-23 championships. Pole vaulter Angelica Moser (24) and multi-eventer Simon Ehammer (22), both members of Generation UBS Kids Cup, even won a European title and a world indoor championship silver medal respectively.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pioneering work at the OYM<\/strong><br \/> Another four \u201craw diamonds\u201d, all of them European U-23 championships medallists, benefit from the Swiss Diamonds Athletics Program, a cooperation of the Athletikzentrum f\u00fcr Spitzensport OYM and Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich. \u201cThis \u201cinnovation cell\u201d in Cham, as well as other initiatives in the area of coaching, will help us get even closer to the top of the athletics world,\u201d Co-Meeting Director Christoph Joho explained, pointing to the fact that things go backwards, if they fail to go forward. \u201cTogether with Swiss Athletics and our partners, we will do our utmost to help Swiss athletes fly high again, both at Letzigrund Stadium and in arenas around the world. We will stay true to the Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich motto: <strong>Never stop getting better<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the world indoor championships (18 to 20 March) to Weltklasse Z\u00fcrich (7 and 8 September)...","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"city":[],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-zurich"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"city","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zurich.diamondleague.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/city?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}