Berlin to host 2018 European Para Athletics Championships

The International Paralympic Committee has announced that Berlin will host the 2018 European Para Athletics Championships.

IPC Athletics expects the German capital will attract more than 600 athletes from 40 countries for the event, which will take place in August 2018 at the Friedrich-Ludwig-Jahn-Sportpark.

Ryan Montgomery, the IPC's director of summer sports, said: "We are very excited that the 2018 European Para Athletics Championships will be staged in the German capital, a city with an excellent track record for staging major athletics events.

"The Championships will take place with roughly two years to go until the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games and will be one of the biggest Para athletics events of the year.

"As a result, I'm expecting some extremely strong competition with Paralympic champions from this September's Rio Games locking horns with world champions from next year's event in London."

The European Championships, which began in 2003, have taken place every two years since 2012.

This year's event was held in June in Grosetto, Italy and resulted in Russia topping the medals table for a third successive time taking home 51 European titles, whilst 25 world records were broken.

Great Britain came second with a record 56 medals, beating their total of 52 from 2014.

Team GB' Georgina Hermitage and David Weir were two of the best performing athletes of the 2016 championships, winning four gold medals each.

Wheelchair athlete Weir has seven European Championship medals in total.