PRIMO NEBIOLO, the president of the International Amateur Athletics Federation, will touch on the need to reestablish the quality of long distance running in Europe, when he addresses a meeting of the Grand Prix Commission in Dublin today.

Nebiolo is the principal speaker at the 51st European Calender Conference which is being held in conjunction with the IAAF's Calender Conference, traditionally one of the great talk shops of the sport.

For some time now, the challenge of lifting European standards to match the dominance of African athletes in the endurance events, has been a source of recurring concern for those charged with the responsibility of monitoring the evolution of athletics in the closing years of the millennium.

It is felt that the imbalance derives from the neglect of 10,000 metres competition, in particular, in the format of Grand Prix programmes in Europe.

This is directly attributable to the dictates of the television moguls who are now effectively the paymasters of the sport and who are not generally enamoured of the merits of an event lasting the better part of half an hour.

Reconciling the different priorities will be a task fraught with problems but Nebiolo is among those who believe that the time is now opportune to confront the issue.

Promoters of Grand Prix meetings will be in conclave on Friday when the escalating budgets required to woo the aristocracy of the sport will almost certainly be top of the agenda.

Various regional conferences open the same day and on Saturday, Jan Zelezny and Svetlana Masterkova will be presented with their trophies after being named as European Athletes of the Year in a poll conducted by sports writers.

The conference which is being attended by more than 600 delegates, is the biggest of its kind to be held in Dublin and is seen as the prelude to an attempt to win support for the staging of the European track and field championships in the city.