President’s Board of European Gymnastics discuss current outstanding issues and prepare for its next Executive Committee - Farid Gayibov

By Trend

In March, the President’s Board of European Gymnastics sat down in Lausanne (SUI) to discuss current outstanding issues and prepare for its next Executive Committee, to be held in the same city on July 15-17, Farid Gayibov, European Gymnastics President said, Trend reports citing his statement.

"Within the framework of my visit to Lausanne, I had several important meetings as well. One of them was with our partners - apparatus suppliers. We had interesting discussions on works carried out within this period. Of course, the development programme related to donation of equipment to our affiliated federations, discount offers to the Organisers of the events of European Gymnastics were key points of discussion during the deliberations of future plans.

Last month, I had a chance to attend the 28th Acrobatic Gymnastics World Championships held in Baku (AZE) on March 10-13. The number of participating countries was less in comparison with the last Worlds and constituted only 17 affiliated Federations of the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG). Considering the positive forecasts in relation to the pandemic, it still has a slight impact on the number of participating Federations, as well as the ongoing conflict in Europe. We hope to have more participating nations at the next major event in Acrobatic Gymnastics which will be the European Championships in 2023. This beautiful, elegant, and spectacular sport discipline deserves more attention, and we often speak about its inclusion into the programme of the Olympic Games. For this to happen, at minimum, the number of competing countries must increase. This is one of the frequently discussed topics. We need to help the affiliated federations to develop Acrobatic Gymnastics and support their participation in our Championships.

I was also thrilled to attend the Artistic Gymnastics World Cup in Baku and was pleased to see so many flags of nations hanging in the arena. I was thrilled to sit with the spectators and enjoy gymnastics from the spectator seats. I congratulate all the finalists of this event and those athletes who earned their qualifications for the World Championships at this event.

Moreover, I was pleased to see the list of countries registered to take part in the European Championships in Rhythmic Gymnastics. The number of participating countries continues to break records even after the impact of the current conflict. It shows that everything is going well in this discipline after the acute pandemic phase. I wish to have the same progressive tendencies across all Gymnastics disciplines.

For the past several years life has not been easy. The pandemic crisis, following the major conflict in Europe affects us all in our daily lives and sports in general. It is becoming difficult for nations to participate in major competitions, train like they used to, and make short term plans. Nonparticipation of athletes in the competitions greatly affects the career of high-performance athletes as they progress at the events, and we are directly affected by this. Another question is how sport in the affected countries will be restored and what training conditions the athletes will have? When we say affected countries, of course, we also mean the countries which embrace the refugees from the conflict zone as sports is mainly budgeted by the governmental resources.

The questions we have in difficult situations always find their answers after the settlement of crisis, for which we have to prepare and make plans for our actions. In the meantime, we must remain strong in what we do and hope that a peaceful resolution of the conflict will soon be in line of sight," the statement said.