Year after year, some 50.000 spectators fill the Brussels’ King Baudouin Stadium for what is so much more than a traditional athletics meeting. The Belgacom Memorial Van Damme is a thrilling cocktail of great sports, music, fireworks and entertainment of all sorts. The world’s best athletes serve the crowd some 18 competitions, each worth an Olympic final; African drums accompany the long distance runners and when the atmosphere in the stadium has reached a peak a mini-concert ends the party.

Nobody would have ever expected such result, back in 1977 when seven Belgian sportswriters decided to launch this “Memorial” to commemorate their friend Ivo Van Damme, who got tragically killed in a car accident, less than five months after his double triumph at the Olympic Games in Montreal, where he won the silver medal in both the 800 and the 1500m.

But after a remarkably emotional and successful first edition, on 16 August 1977, the crowd asked for more and slowly but surely the “Van Damme” became a tradition and a real “society event”, visited every year by thousands of loyal fans and often by a member of the Royal Family.