The 2026 European Athletics Championships brought Europe’s best athletes to Birmingham for seven days of world-class competition. Behind the performances, packed stands, and thousands of fans was another challenge: making sure the technology supporting the event worked seamlessly from start to finish.
At Birmingham 2026, TEC helped deliver 100% uptime, supporting a seamless experience for the fans from start to finish. No interruptions. No visible issues. Just reliable performance at scale. But what does it actually take to make technology feel invisible at an event of this scale?
We spoke to Senior QA Engineer Mircea Olteanu from the TEC team, who was on the ground at the 2026 European Athletics Championships. We wanted to find out what happens behind the scenes, what the team was watching for, and what it takes to keep everything running smoothly when thousands of people are relying on the technology.
First things first
What was TEC's role at Birmingham 2026, and what were you responsible for delivering or supporting?
“The TEC team at Birmingham was responsible in ensuring the 100% uptime and smooth sailing of the competition, whilst being prepared for whatever on-site issues would occur, from either third-party entity as well as monitoring everything was behaving as we were expecting them to.”
How early did the preparation for the event begin, and what did that preparation look like?
“You could say that the preparation for the event started as early as the edition in Rome from 2024 ended, since we started working on lessons learned from then and steadily building the robust systems and features we came to provide now in Birmingham, from infrastructure analysis, performance tests and listening to our users, to re-designing the whole website and integrating our new results engine.”
What are the biggest technical challenges when preparing for an international sporting event of this kind?
“The biggest technical challenge in my eyes has been preparing to withstand the amount of traffic expected for these Championships, which required a lot of preparation in terms of everything in the background, especially the infrastructure, going off on previous user behaviour in using the platforms, expected traffic and the spikes in user requests which happen when a really fast-paced event took place, like the 100m sprints in which the event itself is over in about a minute, prompting users to search for accurate results within seconds, with high data refresh rates on our side in order to satisfy that need, putting a lot of pressure on most systems.”
What happens when the event goes live
For fans, a successful event feels effortless. Behind the scenes, making it happen seamlessly is anything but simple.
What were you monitoring most closely once the championships were underway?
“We have had our eyes constantly on all our analytics and infrastructure monitoring tools to make sure that we were handling everything the users threw at us in terms of traffic, in order to ensure that everything performed to their expectations, without delay.”
What does a typical day look like for the TEC team during a major event?
“Especially on-site, a typical day is quite full, from waking up early in the morning, grabbing a quick bite to eat, travelling to the venue, setting up everything every day, assessing the situation every time to make sure we’re still on the right track. After a few hours of monitoring, finding small improvements and sorting out possible kinks, we get a lunch break, travel back to the hotel with the equipment for a bit of R&R, then travel back to the stadium for the evening sessions which were usually packed with event finals driving user interactions, before at the end of day finally getting back to the hotel a bit before midnight to then do it again the next morning.”
How does the team prepare for the unexpected when everything needs to keep running?
“You can only prepare for so much, even if the preparation and planning starts years ahead of a big competition like the Championships in Birmingham. Everything is set up long before the whole thing is even set to start, to be able to be on-site with confidence in the product we’re delivering as well as our ability in assessing and fixing anything that might happen, have multiple plans of action as well as backup plans in place for a variety of situations we learned from experience can happen in live events.”
Was there a particular moment when you realised, “Everything is working exactly as it should”?
“Yes, the first moment when we came to that realisation was from the first day the competition started and our platforms were handling everything as we expected them, which sometimes is rare, but it just confirms that all our planning, brainstorming and precautionary measures we took beforehand were justified and lead to everything running as smoothly as we and our clients were expecting.”
The importance of getting it right
At the 2026 European Athletics Championships, TEC achieved zero downtime. For an audience, that number might not mean much. They simply expect things to work. But behind that seamless experience are months of preparation, testing, collaboration and monitoring.
What does 100% uptime actually require from a team on the ground?
Providing 100% uptime from the team on the ground requires constant monitoring and analysis of the active users interacting with the product. We had to constantly be aware of what events are happening, which are the expected ones to have high traffic and make sure all signs pointed to it being supported up to the high standards a competition like this requires. It also has everyone looking into every nook and cranny of the platforms to make sure that anything that might be a sign of potential concern is being resolved asap, without impacting users in the slightest, which lead to a couple of longer days in the end, but provided great results.
How much of that success comes down to preparation before the event even begins?
“I consider most of the success that we’ve been able to provide is due to all the preparation work we have been doing since the edition in Rome, assuming you can handle everything on-site when the pressure is on would be too bold, you need to know about situations before they are bound to happen and have solutions in place to mitigate any problems and that comes through in our experience of providing live events for a long time now.”
How closely does TEC work with the wider event team to make sure technology supports the experience rather than getting in the way of it?
“We at TEC have to work really close to all of the wider event team, since they can help us in determining the focus of the work beside our expertise, what the expected outcomes are, priorities, for us to deliver work that benefits the experience and enriches it, rather than coming up with something that might be cumbersome to for example, a new user that is just getting into athletics and has a favourite athlete, versus an active athlete or their coaches that depend on us delivering accurate data in every step of a marathon to better understand their progress.”
When nobody notices the technology
Perhaps that’s the ultimate measure of success. When fans aren’t thinking about the technology, it’s doing exactly what it should. They’re focused on the competition. The atmosphere. The athletes. The experience.
What does “invisible technology” mean to you?
“I think that for me “invisible technology” is when we can provide users an experience that does not make them think about what’s going on behind the scenes to make it work. It’s providing that moment when your favourite athlete wins their event and you get their record-breaking results at your fingertips the moment you see it happen live in the stadium in front of your eyes.”
Is there a sense of satisfaction in knowing that people don't notice the work you've done because everything simply works?
“Of course there’s an immense sense of satisfaction in knowing that, it’s what everyone strives for in this kind of work. No one wants to feel at fault for something going wrong, knowing they could’ve done something to prevent it. Fortunately, we had that satisfaction day in and day out, but especially at the end when we could draw the conclusion of a perfectly handled event.”
What do you think fans and spectators would be surprised to learn about what happens behind the scenes?
“I’m guessing that the amount of work and preparation that goes into something like the would be surprising. The knowledge someone needs to accumulate to be able to look at all of the angles in which some problem might try to rear its head. A digital team is more than just a few people looking at graphs, the amount of collaboration and communication we are required to do behind the scenes looks like a “war room” from the movies sometimes, but that also enriches our experience and boosts our confidence of delivery, when we know the levels that we go to in providing the fans with everything they need, when they need it.”
Taking the experience forward
Every major event creates an opportunity to learn. From preparation and performance to the smallest details behind the scenes, every experience helps us raise the bar for what comes next.
What did the team learn from Birmingham 2026 that will influence future events?
“Probably that hard work pays off in the end, we found a way of working that has provided great results and that should be our norm moving forward. The tough part for future events is finding ways to find even more ways to improve user experience now that we know that everything we have at the moment is more than stable.”
What would you do differently next time?
“It’s hard at the moment to think about what we would do differently after such a successful delivery of the European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, but for myself, I would definitely want to be more proactive in coming up with improvements to the product and providing the feedback further.”
What are you most proud of from the Birmingham 2026 experience?
“I’m definitely most proud about how everyone from the TEC team locked in and focused on delivering to the absolute best of our abilities. I don’t think I could’ve asked for better teammates in all of this and the knowledge each of us brought to the table and complimented each other to ensure everything went as smooth as it did.”
The TEC standard
For TEC, reliability is about creating the conditions for everyone else to focus on what matters. At the 2026 European Athletics Championships, that meant helping deliver 100% uptime and a seamless experience for fans from start to finish.
When nobody notices the technology, that’s usually a sign it’s working perfectly. And that’s the standard we always strive for.
