NETANYA, Israel, March 7. THE Middle East continues its progression to becoming a major mecca for international competitions with the announcement that Israel will be the host of next year\u2019s European Short Course Championships.<\/p>\n
The meet, scheduled for January 2015, will be the first major international swimming competition to be held in the country outside of the Maccabiah Games, a multi-sport event held every four years for Jewish athletes. The European championships will be staged at the Wingate Institute\u2019s new 50-meter pool, which was christened with the Israeli nationals, where more than a dozen national records fell in the three-day meet.<\/p>\n
The pool is following the new trend of constructing a tank that is 3 meters deep, and could set the stage for future meets in the city located on the Mediterranean Sea about 60 miles northwest of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor us this is like hosting the Olympics,\u201d said Noam Zwi, President of the Israeli Swimming Association.<\/p>\n
Gal Nevo could be one of the top Israeli stars of next year\u2019s European championships. The former standout at Georgia Tech won a silver at last December\u2019s short course Europeans in the 400 IM and was in the championship final of the 100 IM and 200 IM.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s hosting of the short course European championships will mark just the second time in the 18 years of the meet that a Middle Eastern country will be the site of the championships. Istanbul, Turkey, hosted the meet in 2009.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NETANYA, Israel, March 7. THE Middle East continues its progression to becoming a major mecca for international competitions with the announcement that Israel will be the host of next year\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":45518,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[2032,524,28255,905,31964,31968,2189,10331,16445,9506,31965,31967,143,26254,24693,142,203,31966,238,1559,31963,24275],"class_list":["post-51072","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-world","tag-asia","tag-european-championships","tag-gal-nevo","tag-israel","tag-israeli-jews","tag-israeli-swimming-association","tag-istanbul","tag-jerusalem","tag-mediterranean-sea","tag-middle-east","tag-netanya","tag-noam-zwi","tag-president","tag-short-course","tag-sports","tag-swimming","tag-the-european-championships","tag-the-israeli-swimming-association","tag-the-olympics","tag-turkey","tag-western-asia","tag-wingate-institute"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n