World Sailing Presidential Update – November 2018

World Sailing President Kim Andersen delivers his monthly newsletter to share the activities from the world governing body for the sport of sailing.

Communication around Sailing
Communication is an important tool for any sport as it allows us to keep up to date with important news. At World Sailing we have recently had a lot of miscommunication, where interpretations of news were trying to be used in order to influence the processes and decisions made by the Council.

However, I was pleased to see that many of the traditional and prestigious sailing media took the time and effort to join our 2018 Annual Meeting in order to learn more about our decision-making processes as well as the many dedicated sailors who have been contributing in Committees, Commissions and Working Parties.

You can have a look on the conclusions from one of the media that was on site the whole week by clicking on the following link.

Governance & Decision-making processes
As many of you know, within the last year World Sailing implemented a new Governance Commission. I am happy to announce that the hard work done by this commission, led by the independent chair Maria Clarke, was presented during a workshop and at the Council meeting in Sarasota, FL. Full report.

Rolex World Sailor of the Year and World Sailing Awards
This year World Sailing decided to present the annual awards in an innovative new format much to the delight of the attendees. Full report.

The 2024 Olympic Venue
Certainly, one of the major sport decisions taken during the annual meeting was finalizing selecting the events and guidelines regarding the equipment for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, where the host city for sailing will be Marseille.

As for the slate of events discussed during the Council meeting in May, I am pleased to inform that all events were confirmed. The only exception was the “Single Handed Mixed” event that was changed to the “Double Handed Mixed Offshore” – the reason behind this board’s decision is the feedback received after the midyear meeting from many MNAs that were struggling with the event format and equipment for the single handed mixed event. Full report.

Showcasing Sailing
Technology has always been an important part of sailing and now that times are changing we must embrace technology also from a communication and broadcasting perspective. We need to make sure that we are taking advantage of the latest technological advances out there. Full report.

The Sustainability Agenda 2030
We kicked off the Sustainability Agenda 2030 project with a huge ambition in 2017, and since then the moment has only been increasing. Already we have received positive feedback from more than 75 countries and we have reaped the benefits of our initial work when activities were fully implemented at the Hempel Sailing World Championships and the Youth Sailing World Championships this year. Full report.

eSailing
This innovative discipline was introduced at the beginning of this year and officially launched in our mid-year meeting. Since its introduction, 164,658 distinct players have engaged with this new initiative and 14,574 players registered to be ranked in the inaugural eSailing World Championship. Full report.

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