Between 21st and 30th June 2019, the Belarusian city of Minsk will host the 2nd European Games, where the Slovene national team will compete in 13 sports disciplines for the medals and try to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. On 3rd May, in Rome, the organisers of the 2nd European Games, following their first edition in 2015 in Baku, Azerbaijan, lit the Flame of Peace, which on its way to Minsk stopped also in Ljubljana to pay tribute to this year’s largest European competition. On Wednesday, 8th May, the Flame visited BTC City Ljubljana, where the Slovenian Olympic Committee – Association of Sports Federations (OCS) has its seat.

The Flame of Peace was brought to the green terrace of the Crystal Palace by Janez Škrabec, Honorary Consul of the Republic of Belarus in Slovenia, and gymnast Sašo Bertoncelj, who was the only member of the Slovene national team to win the gold medal in Baku 2015. At the event, the Slovene national team candidates for the European Games in Minsk were presented. Today, at the assembly of the Executive Committee of OCS, the candidates were also officially recognised as members of the Slovene national team EG Minsk 2019. Along with the accompanying teams, the entire national team will include 109 people, of whom 69 athletes will compete in 13 sports disciplines.

The accompanying entertainment programme was spruced up by the children’s choir OŠ Nove Jarše and by two mascots – fox Foksi and fox Lesik (the official mascot of Minsk European Games).

The BTC Company, a long-standing sponsor of OCS and from 2019 also the general OCS sponsor for the Olympic cycle Pyeongchang 2018 – Beijing 2022, with which it has become a part of the group of general OCS sponsors, wishes a lot of success to all the athletes.