In the preparation of the up-coming Bucharest Marathon, a press conference was held on 3 October, in which Dan Mihai – Partner and Coordinator of the Sports & Anti-Doping Law practice, explained from a legal perspective the importance of governance in sport.
Sports competitions and sport in general mean organization and rigor. Transposing them into rules provides a degree of comfort to all those who are part of this phenomenon: organizers, sponsors, participants, spectators. In any competition organized under the aegis of an International Federation, all aspects are detailed and carefully checked to meet the standards required for these events. The requirements imposed by IAAF to obtain the “Bronze Label” are no exception. We have tried to adapt the Marathon Regulation to transpose both the IAAF requirements for organizing a “Bronze Label” certified event, as well as to trace certain aspects pointed-out by the participants in previous editions.
The fact that the organizers of the Bucharest Marathon understood that governance in sport, an area that is still poor in Romania, is just as important as the corporate governance we are used to denotes that this event is a leader in professionalizing and imposing a model of organizing a sports competition addressed to elite athletes as well as to amateur and sports fans in general.
This is one of the reasons why such an event should be supported, in the conditions in which Bucharest, due to infrastructure problems, lost in the last year the organization of two major sports events: the ATP tennis tournament in favour of Budapest and the European Gymnastics Championship in favour of Cluj.