Meeting last weekend in Paris for its annual seminar, the Association of European Olympic Committees (EOC) awarded its traditional Piotr Nurowski Prize. For its eighth edition, the award went to a young Slovak ice hockey player, Nela Lopusanova (pictured above with EOC President Spyros Capralos). The 15-year-old athlete received over 40% of the votes, beating out the other four finalists, all of whom came from winter sports: Mia Brookes (Great Britain), Erik Canovi (Italy), Oleksandra Merkushyna (Ukraine) and Nina Pinzarrone (Belgium). Nela Lopusanova was voted best player of the tournament at the 2023 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival (EYOWF) in Friuli Venezia Giulia, Italy, and was also named best player at the U18 World Championship, where she scored nine goals and 12 points. In addition to the Piotr Nurowski trophy, awarded by the EOC since 2011 to the best young European athlete in memory of the former president of the Polish Olympic Committee, who died in a plane crash a year earlier, Nela Lopusanova won a €15,000 training grant.
