Says the Prez

The 2013 ISAF-Mid Year Meeting came to a close over the weekend in Copenhagen, Denmark. This was the first meeting for new ISAF President Carlo Croce. Here are excerpts from his report…

“I feel that managing the Federation (ISAF) through its Regulations, as has been done in the past, is not efficient and doesn’t give us the results quickly enough. We must look at the governance structure of ISAF. We have too many layers of decision making, which makes it harder to identify who is responsible for what and what progress is being made.”

“I am still confused and surprised by the number of Committees, Sub-committees, Commissions, Working Parties and working groups we have. I have had a meeting with the Chairman of the Constitution Committee and we are developing some ideas to make things clearer and more efficient. Although I received your support and mandate to become your President in Dublin, I didn’t enjoy the process. I think with some small changes we can improve the election process, making it easier and less painful for all. You can expect proposals to be put forward to you for your consideration and guidance.”

“I personally see Kiteboarding as a new and different branch of sailing, very attractive, spectacular and not too expensive. Also their format is new and TV friendly. I think we should strongly support the kite as a new 11th (Olympic) medal without changing the other events. This is also the impression I got from my visit to President Rogge: don’t make changes to the events line-up, its sending confusing messages to the IOC members. Changes in the programme means higher costs for the MNAs which in turn means that developing nations lag behind and this is discouraging.”

“We have formally asked to get the Star in for 2016 in the light of the special case of the strong lobby by the Brazil, but at the same time our expectations should be modest. It has been made very clear that there is little room in the number of events at this stage. All sports have been told that changes should be made within the current level of the number of events and the number of athletes.”

“The pressure will remain to make the Games easier and cheaper to run. We need to look at shortening the events using less days; having fewer courses, less measurement, fewer officials and so on. So for 2020 all our efforts could be to get kiteboarding in without changing 2016 events.”

Complete report: http://www.sailing.org/news/34377.php