Valerie Vili of NZ competing for Oceania at the 2006 IAAF World Cup in Athletics in Athens (© Getty Images)
Monte The IAAF is changing. For a great many years the IAAF has been the sole world arbiter of the sport of Athletics.
It has put its fingers across all the activities of the sport. Has this been a good thing or are there other possibilities?
President Diack has just taken a dramatic step into the future. The Father has seen his children grow up and now it is time for them to enjoy freedom. The President's plan is that the 5 Area Associations are now to be liberated and encouraged to manage their own affairs around the globe.
The IAAF will be on hand to supply support and ideas if needed, but the 5 Global Associations are now the principal masters of their own organisations. Suddenly we have to recognise that Asia may take a very different path from Europe or Africa, than the Americas and Oceania. Let us take Oceania as a model.
President Geoff Gardner is now in charge of a vast tract of Land and Sea with the smallest resources. Oceania has 3 major cultural groups and hundreds of smaller cultural ethnicities. So already there are difficult internal challenges to conquer.
But Geoff and his team are already centralising his organisation for the first time, with help and advice available from the IAAF only if requested.
It will be fascinating to see how the new structure matures and what directions the new Associations will take.
Hopefully they will be able to concur between themselves to exchange methods and new skills and rejuvenate the whole of Athletics.
OCEANIA – A CASE STUDY
The Oceania Athletics Association recently had the unique opportunity of meeting with IAAF representatives to discuss how decentralization can be made to work in the Oceania Area. Oceania Athletics Association (OAA) President, Geoff Gardner and Executive Director, Yvonne Mullins, had a full day of discussions with IAAF Council Member Hansjorg Wirz and IAAF staff member Jee Isram to discuss everything from local competitions through to the IAAF World Athletics Series events and everything in between.
It was acknowledged that although there are many commonalities between the Area Associations there are equally many more differences. For instance, it was clear that the challenges that face the European Area, of which Hansjorg is President, are quite different from the issues facing Oceania Area and equally different for all of the Areas and the differences need to be acknowledged if the sport is to grow in the Areas. Oceania faces the challenges of distance, with most of its area covered by water, the cost of travel and how to deliver competition is something that is always at the forefront of planning. Having amongst its membership the smallest Federations in the world also delivers some other interesting trials and tribulations.
What was most interesting amongst the discussions was the common acceptance of the fact that there are major differences in the world of athletics from one side to the other and that ‘one size does not fit all’!
“You can look at a map of the world, but until you actually live in that map you can’t understand the distances that Federations travel for a Regional Competition. That coupled with the fact that we have three major cultural groups (with hundreds of smaller cultural ethnicities) makes it almost impossible to deliver a single product. The decentralization of the IAAF’s programmes will allow athletics to grow in the Oceania Area”, said Executive Director, Yvonne Mullins.
The IAAF has already taken into account the uniqueness of the Oceania Area in putting into place the rationalisation of the Oceania Area Association. Where the Area has previously had three areas of areas of responsibility delivering its programmes – the High Performance Training Centre, Regional Development Centre and Oceania Area Association, the IAAF agreed that in working within the confines of the World Plan and taking into account the Decentralisation of the Association that the Area would, primarily to achieve efficiencies of serviced and economy, have a centralized operation in the Area.
This centralisation of the Oceania Area Association is still a work in progress and although there have been the obvious teething problems, the support of the IAAF and its vision of a decentralised Association has given Oceania a road map for a successful future.
Oceania President, Geoff Gardner (who interestingly comes from one of the smallest, if not the smallest Federation of the IAAF Family) was delighted with the discussions that took place in Singapore in May 2009: “the Oceania Area has embraced the IAAF’s ability to change the way it services the sport in our world, the continued consultation with the Area Association’s means that we will come up with organisational changes which will see the IAAF lead the way in sport in the years to come.”
IAAF