Kim Anderson on his vision for World Sailing

World Sailing’s new president, Kim Anderson, talks to SportsPro about his hopes for his presidential term and reflects on a successful Olympic Games.

How has your first month in charge been?
I have been very busy meeting new people. A lot of people have been in contact to congratulate me but also to give me their opinion on what can be optimised or what can be done differently in the future. That is always positive but, also, we need to create a structure that will enable us to go forward and make good decisions based on all of this input. I appreciate the input but the first weeks have been very turbulent.

What sort of state was World Sailing in when you joined?
Well, I have been part of World Sailing for many years: I worked for eight years in council, on the events committee and equipment committee. So I know World Sailing from the inside. I already know the structure of the organisation – but the arrangement of the new office is something that I need to become acquainted with.

It is probably still a little bit too early for me to definitively say what the state was. However, I think that there are a lot positive of things that I can add with my professional background of running various companies. On the other hand, I have got a new board, who I need to firstly meet and then collaborate on ideas with. Some of them have been serving for the past four years but there are also a lot of new members. I am sure that together we can find a good pathway forward for World Sailing.

What do you see as your main priorities as president of World Sailing?
I will try to follow out the policies that I set out in my election campaign. I believe that there are three main priorities to ensure the future success of World Sailing. Firstly, we must work on the Olympic movement in order to secure our Olympic status and to be proactive in how we are conducting our sport at the Olympics – which is a very important shop window for sailing – and also to attract more people.

The second issue is about growing the sport and that has two lines of growth: adding more nations to World Sailing – we have 146 but we have more interested – and also we want to make a very strong programme that will make us better connected across the globe.

Lastly, the way that we are governing our sport. We have a very complex structure which, I think, should be more transparent for everyone. Everyone should be able to see the how we get to the discussions. On the governance structure, we must work on the transparency.

Those are the three main priorities that I am working on now.

Full report… click here.