World Sailing Presidential Update – February 2017

Kim Andersen

World Sailing President Kim Andersen shares insights and decisions made within World Sailing in this February update. Specifically, this report covers the decisions about the Olympic Games 11th medal, important issues addressing World Sailing structure and priorities, as well as the recent successes that have occurred within the sport…

Olympic Games – 11th medal
The Olympic Games are always a highlight for sailing. However, on the prospect of an 11th medal for our sport in Tokyo, it has become clear that there is a rather minimal chance of this medal being allocated to us.

Furthermore, an extension of our medal programme would also present many limitations and challenges such as conflicting event schedules, having to maintain the numbers of athletes leading to a decrease in participating nations.

While showcase events are important, they too have limitations including meeting specific criteria and approval from the IOC and the host country. Instead, Sailing can demonstrate the strength of our sport by carefully defining our disciplines.

While reviewing the many submissions, the board supported to put forward two showcase events, these being keelboat and kiteboarding. This selection comes due to the Keelboat event being a major part of our sport and Kite being a relatively new and rapidly developing discipline.

As mentioned, while the Games are a platform to showcase our sport, they are also about highlighting the strength of our athletes as they overcome technical and mental challenges during the competition.

The board’s submission regarding pumping is to show athleticism and the change of positions on the downwind leg, thus increasing the excitement for a broader audience. This is only proposed for the top events, and I believe that with this initiative we can strengthen the profile of sailing at the Olympics.

Within World Sailing
Internally, within World Sailing we are currently addressing many important issues including: Roles of regional organisations, committee appointments, World Sailing Priorities going forward and the relocation of the World Sailing HQ. I’d like to take a moment to give you an overview of each.

With regards to the World Sailing governance structure, many MNAs and regional organisations have asked about the structure of World Sailing and the increasing role of regional organisations.

According to our constitution, World Sailing is based on an MNA structure with MNA groups selecting the representations around the Council table. If MNAs agree that in their region they would like to have a regional body with clear goals aimed at developing and supporting our sport and which serves a specific need, World Sailing would welcome the formation of a regional body serving the needs of those identified.

Therefore, to clarify, based on this interpretation, as the President of World Sailing I would support the decision by MNAs to put into practice such a structure – with regional bodies rooted in accomplishing the specific needs of the MNAs.

With regards to Committee appointments, we have been very proactive in improving the decision making process. As such the board has now agreed on the various Chairs and Vice Chairs, and letting this team, together with an appointed Vice President, put forward the committee members selected from the nomination lists.

The board has reminded this team that Committee Members must be specialists serving the sport worldwide and therefore not nationally biased. The board has also instructed the nominated Chairs and Vice Chairs to limit the numbers of Committee Members (not Council Members) in-order to strengthen the management, and improve the various Committees’ agility, transparency and overall decision-making process in order to provide the best advice to Council.

Going forward, our goal is to gather clear and well-defined input from each MNA and the collective MNA groups regarding their priorities. We are currently designing a process which will allow each MNA to give their input and opinion.

The aim is that this feedback will be gathered and analyzed in the coming months; then be ready to be presented at our Mid-Year meeting, allowing the Council to work with the Committees’ leadership to consider the best means of fulfilling such priorities. It is for this reason that we are not planning to have Committee meetings at the Mid-Year meeting, as we feel it would be more beneficial in the longer term to empower them by providing them with the comprehensive feedback of our MNAs.

The relocation of the World Sailing HQ has been a topic which my team and I have been putting a lot of energy. As many of you know, we will need to move out of our current home in Southampton this summer.

As with all good leadership, the board and myself have looked into what is best for the World Sailing organization and for our sport. We have taken into consideration the DNA of World Sailing as a whole, the technical skills we need to run the organisation, the aspect of being international and having options of multi-lingual competencies, accessibility, etc.

This has been weighed and reviewed, and we are pleased to announce that in the best interest of the organization and the sport we have decided to move the headquarters to London. We are currently working with partners in the area to ensure that this move is as smooth as possible, and will provide you all with more information in the coming months.

I look forward to providing more updates on the growth of our sport and our federation in a month’s time. As always I am very interested in hearing all of your views about the future of our sport, so please feel free to get in contact with me via email, facebook, or twitter.