65th UIPM Congress looks to the future

The 65th Annual UIPM Modern Pentathlon Congress, which took place in Limassol, Cyprus, this weekend, saw delegates from almost 50 countries present as the nations planned towards the Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The Executive Board also got together in the two days prior to the Congress.

Both meetings were chaired by UIPM President Dr h. c. Klaus Schormann, and in both he welcomed all the delegates and paid special thanks to the efforts of General Charalambos Lottas, President of the Cyprus Modern Pentathlon Biathlon Association and Secretary General of the Cyprus Olympic Committee, for hosting everyone in Limassol. It was also Shiny Fang’s first Congress as Secretary General following her election to the post in 2012.

The names of the 2013 Best Competitions were announced as the Biathle Triathle World Championships Limassol won the Development award, World Cup #3 Chengdu took Best Promoted, Champion of Champion Qatar claimed the Best New Competition and the Best Overall went to World Cup Final Nizhny Novgorod.

The bulk of the discussions centred on the motions presented at this Congress with much debating over the structure of the fencing ladder system. In the end most of the voting was in favour of the introduction of this new concept, with 2014 season set to be a testing phase.  An Ad hoc working group of experts has been put together to present various options for the ladder to the fencing system to be tried in competition from as early as January.

There were also several new Member Federations welcomed into the Modern Pentathlon family during the Congress as UIPM continued its development drive with the focus on grassroots programs to grow participation at all levels. Costa Rica, Nepal, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Kosovo were unveiled as the new members whilst the Hong Kong and Peru Federations were re-activated.

A ‘Sport for All’ Commission was then put in place at the Congress with the aim for it to help promote the development initiatives of UIPM with its pre-defined sports such as Biathle, Triathle and Tetrathlon. The group will support the creation of training camps for new and developing athletes and included in this outreach program will be the development of coaches as well as a detailed coaches’ manual.

UIPM President Dr Klaus Schormann announced the renewal of the partnership with RAM Swiss watches until at least 2020, bringing a fresh injection of sponsorship with extra funds made available as well as gifts for all major competitions.

Secretary General Shiny Fang promoted UIPM’s involvement and participation in the Asian Beach Games and the World Beach Games and highlighted new initiatives around its new membership with FISU.

The budget for 2014 and the distribution of funds for 2014 was detailed to all the attendees and presentations by all Executive Board Members and the various Confederation Presidents were then followed by voting on several other motions.

After the Executive Board were presented the bids for all major competition from the next three years, they voted in order to set the calendar until 2016. You can view it here

The Next Congress will take place in Sofia, Bulgaria, 28-31 November.