Papaflessia () is an annual international

track and field Track and field (or athletics in British English) is a sport that includes Competition#Sports, athletic contests based on running, jumping, and throwing skills. The name used in North America is derived from where the sport takes place, a ru ...

meeting that is held in

Kalamata Kalamata ( ) is the second most populous city of the Peloponnese peninsula in southern Greece after Patras, and the largest city of the Peloponnese (region), homonymous administrative region. As the capital and chief port of the Messenia regiona ...

Greece Greece, officially the Hellenic Republic, is a country in Southeast Europe. Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula, it shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to th ...

. The meeting falls within the

European Athletic Association The European Athletic Association (EAA, more commonly known as European Athletics) is the governing body for athletics in Europe. It is one of the six Area Associations of the world's athletics governing body World Athletics. European Athletics h ...

's calendar of meeting. The event caters to both men and women and athletic events held at the meeting include sprints,

high jump The high jump is a track and field event in which competitors must jump unaided over a horizontal bar placed at measured heights without dislodging it. In its modern, most-practiced format, a bar is placed between two standards with a crash mat f ...

long jump The long jump is a track and field event in which athletes combine speed, strength and agility in an attempt to leap as far as possible from a takeoff point. Along with the triple jump, the two events that measure jumping for distance as a gr ...

triple jump The triple jump, sometimes referred to as the hop, step and jump or the hop, skip and jump, is a track and field event, similar to long jump. As a group, the two events are referred to as the "horizontal jumps". The competitor runs down the tr ...

and

javelin A javelin is a light spear designed primarily to be thrown, historically as a ranged weapon. Today, the javelin is predominantly used for sporting purposes such as the javelin throw. The javelin is nearly always thrown by hand, unlike the sling ...

. Papaflessia was named in honour of

Papaflessas Grigorios Dimitrios Dikaios-Flessas (; 1788 – 25 May 1825), popularly known as Papaflessas (), was a Greek priest and government official who became one of the most influential figures during the Greek War of Independence. The prefix () in t ...

, a

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

priest and celebrated military leader who died at the

Battle of Maniaki The Battle of Maniaki was fought on May 20, 1825, in Maniaki, Greece (in the hills east of Gargalianoi) between Egyptian forces led by Ibrahim Pasha and Greek forces led by Papaflessas.Finlay, p. 75. "He quitted Nauplia with great parade, at ...

during the

Greek Revolution The Greek War of Independence, also known as the Greek Revolution or the Greek Revolution of 1821, was a successful war of independence by Greek revolutionaries against the Ottoman Empire between 1821 and 1829. In 1826, the Greeks were assisted ...

. The meeting was inaugurated in 1954 and was held at the stadium of

Messiniakos Founded in 1888, Messiniakos Gymnastic Club () is one of the oldest athletic club in Greece with Panagiotis Benakis its first president. Messiniakos' traditional colours are green and white and in 1924 adopted as symbol a platanus foil. Messiniak ...

until 1968, when a

military coup d'état A military, also known collectively as armed forces, is a heavily armed, highly organized force primarily intended for warfare. Militaries are typically authorized and maintained by a sovereign state, with their members identifiable by a d ...

ceased festivities. The athletics meeting was revived in 1984 and events held in the Kalamata Metropolitan Stadium were mainly contested between local athletes. In 1994 the meeting expanded to include international athletes. Past participants include Olympic gold medallists Stefka Kostadinova and Yelena Yelesina and English sprinters

Dwain Chambers Dwain Anthony Chambers (born 5 April 1978) is a British track and field, track Sprint (running), sprinter. He has won international medals at World and European levels and is one of the fastest European sprinters in the history of athletics (spo ...

and John Regis.

References

External links

Official website
* European Athletic Association meetings Sport in Kalamata Athletics competitions in Greece World Athletics Continental Tour meetings {{Greece-sport-stub