Who will succeed Australia’s Stan Perkins as WMA president? Will the General Assembly in Malaga downsize itself — by limiting each nation to a maximum of three delegates instead of five? Will the Age-Graded Tables be updated for single-year use instead of the current five-year groupings?
Those questions will be answered the first Saturday of the world meet, under way in a month.
Also up for a vote — eliminating the office of women’s representative. (The WMA Council, which made the proposal, said: “Over time the composition of the Council and the Committees of the Council have changed so that women now have a good representation. There is also now total equality in the competition events provided.”)
According to docs I’ve obtained, WMA won’t be considering any new rules of competition. (But the Age-Graded Tables idea apparently would boost points for combined-event athletes near the end of their age groups.)
Two days before the prez election, athletes and delegates will be able to quiz the three candidates. But I jumped the gun and sent questionnaires to the trio. They graciously responded by my August 1 deadline.
History could be made, with the prospect of the first American or first woman being chosen to lead World Masters Athletics. We’ll see. (These interviews were lightly edited to account for language differences.)
- Q&A with Germany’s Margit Jungmann
- Q&A with Finland’s Vesa Lappalainen
- Q&A with America’s Gary Snyder
Here are the General Assembly documents:
- Malaga motions for General Assembly
- Malaga presidential candidates biographies
- Malaga 2018 General Assembly agenda
- Malaga Championship rules 2018-2020
- Malaga Candidates Forum
Contribute to support independent track and field journalism:
The assertion by the WMA Council that “women now have a good representation” is certainly not true in Asia, and I suspect not in Africa or South America either. That motion needs to be defeated.
The French/Italian proposal to give national IAAF affiliates control of who represents masters should be defeated. Those people are not elected by masters. Indeed, in many countries the head of the IAAF affiliate is someone you wouldn’t like to meet in a dark alley. Saddam Hussein’s son, recall, was head of the Iraq NOC until the Americans shot him. Bashr al Assad’s brother was the head of the Syrian NOC until he killed himself in his sports car. Keep masters track under the control of masters.
I think IAAF affiliates shouldn’t control national masters bodies
The issue is not to give IAAF ” control” on our Masters but to look for consolidate a joint and integrated plan of action particularly at national level, in order to fight together against “ageisme” and discrimination in sport..Masters is not a recreation for old people…or third age tourists…!!!