The Fourth Day
Day four in Bangkok, THA, was as busy as the previous ones for the WDSF delegation made up of President Lukas Hinder, General Manager Guillaume Felli, Athletes' Commission chair Ashli Williamson an adviser Jean-Laurent Bourquin. It is again Ashli who reports on the delegation's activities. A meeting with the organisers of The World Games 2021 Birmingham was followed by another with the Global Association of International Sports Federation (GAISF) focusing on intentions to launch a series of GAISF games shortly!
First we met with the Organising Committee for The World Games 2021 Birmingham. The U.S. hosts are excited to have DanceSportas part of their games. WDSF is on the official Sports Programme with Latin, Rock ‘n’ Roll and Standard. Maybe showcases in other disciplines could be added later. We have seen where the athletes will be housed and at which venue they will competeThe World Games 2021 in Alabama’s capital from 15 to 25 July 2021 will prove to be another great experience for all our athletes.
The second meeting focused on the efforts of GAISF to relaunch and launch its proprietary games: World Combat Games, World Mind Gamest, World Urban Games. In the meeting opened by GAISF President Patrick Baumann and chaired by FIRS (Roller Sports) President Sabatino Arac, the new concept underlying the World Urban Games (WUG) was elaborated on: they should bring sports to the people, not the other way around as in the traditional events. All sports should be contested at downtown locations and not in the traditional venues: arenas or stadia.
More than 50 cities are interested in hosting the first edition and the bidding process is in progress already. The first WUG will likely have 14 medal sports, plus a few showcase sports. To ensure that the games are a success wherever they are held, they should comprise eight core sports everywhere – as regular fixture on the programme – and include a few additional sports to cater to the local gusto. DanceSport would be one of the core sports. Numerous International Federations that had their sports included in some of the earlier WUG concepts (going back to 2012) were disappointed that they were dropped from the programme. Just another example of WDSF has managed position itself well in world sports!
Other GAISF multi-sport games will also get relaunched during the upcoming years after they were put on hold in 2015: World Combat Games, World Mind Games. Who knows, maybe the World Artistic Games, which were based on a concept developed by WDSF in 2011, will become a reality too.
Important to point out that all these GAISF games will not generate any expenses to the federations. And provided everything works out, they should even bring revenue to the sports.
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Ashli
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