New broadcast guidance puts sporting technique and athlete dignity at the centre of the European Championships
The European Athletics Championships open in Birmingham on Monday with more than medals at stake. As cameras follow Europe’s leading competitors, new broadcasting guidance will face its first major championship-stage scrutiny: can television show the power, technique and emotion of women’s athletics without reducing competitors to sexualised images?
By Daniel Mercer, Sports Correspondent, The European Times
A championship seen through many lenses
The championships run from 10 to 16 August at Alexander Stadium, marking the first time Britain has hosted Europe’s premier outdoor athletics competition. The official Birmingham 2026 programme brings together track races, jumps, throws, combined events and road competitions during seven days of continental competition.
That range makes athletics unusually demanding for television crews. A sprint may be decided in a fraction of a second, while a field event unfolds through repeated attempts, technical adjustments and long periods of concentration. Cameras must move between competition, reaction and analysis without intruding on athletes at vulnerable moments.
The European Broadcasting Union and European Athletics addressed that responsibility in June with Raising the Bar, guidelines for respectful coverage of women’s athletics. The document was developed with broadcast professionals and Olympians Holly Bradshaw, Ivana Španović and Blanka Vlašić.
Its central argument is practical rather than cosmetic: the camera angles that best explain performance are often also those that treat athletes most respectfully. A wide side view of a high jumper, for example, can reveal the approach, curve and take-off. A tightly cropped replay from beneath the bar may provide little technical information while producing an unnecessarily compromising image.
Technique instead of objectification
The guidance examines high jump, pole vault, horizontal jumps and running events. It warns against low camera positions, prolonged close-ups from behind and slow-motion sequences that concentrate on an athlete’s body rather than the movement that determines performance.
For pole vault, it encourages replays that reveal the final strides, pole plant, take-off and inversion. In long jump, side-on images can show speed, foot placement and the relationship between the take-off board and landing. For runners, the guidance recommends avoiding excessively tight or low shots during starting-line preparations and moments of exhaustion after the finish.
This is not an argument for emotionally flat broadcasting. Faces, celebrations, disappointment and exchanges with coaches remain essential parts of sport. The question is whether those images help the audience understand the competition or merely expose an athlete at a moment when she has little control over how her body is being presented.
The distinction matters beyond individual discomfort. Images selected for live coverage can be clipped, reposted and detached from their sporting context within minutes. Women athletes have described slow-motion footage circulating online in ways that invite sexual commentary and abuse. What begins as a production choice inside a stadium can therefore become a safeguarding issue across digital platforms.
Guidance will need accountability
The EBU document establishes expectations, but it is guidance rather than an independent enforcement system. Its value will depend on whether directors, camera operators, replay teams, commentators and rights-holding broadcasters incorporate it consistently into their work.
A meaningful assessment should include more than an absence of the most obviously intrusive shots. Broadcasters could examine whether women and men receive comparable technical analysis, whether replay choices explain performance equally well and whether athletes have a clear route for raising concerns.
European Athletics and the EBU could also strengthen confidence by reporting after major championships on how the guidance was applied, what problems arose and whether athletes considered the coverage fair. Without feedback and review, even carefully written standards risk remaining an editorial aspiration rather than changing daily production culture.
The wider equality question is familiar. As The European Times has reported on the treatment of women in sport, greater visibility does not automatically deliver equality. Coverage can increase while stereotypes, unequal pay and barriers to leadership remain intact.
A better view of elite performance
Birmingham offers a useful opportunity because athletics makes the relationship between technique and representation especially visible. Every jump, throw and race contains details that a knowledgeable production team can reveal: rhythm, balance, acceleration, positioning and decision-making under pressure.
Respectful coverage should therefore improve the broadcast rather than constrain it. Showing athletes as skilled professionals gives commentators more to explain and audiences more to understand. It also places women’s events where they belong: within the same serious sporting language routinely applied to men’s competition.
The medals awarded in Birmingham will record who ran fastest, jumped highest or threw furthest. The pictures transmitted across Europe will shape something less measurable but still important: whether millions of viewers see women athletes primarily as bodies under observation or as competitors whose craft deserves close, informed attention.
