GREETINGS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL FENCING FEDERATION -ALISHER USMANOV
GREETINGS OF THE PRESIDENT OF THE INTERNATIONAL FENCING FEDERATION -ALISHER USMANOV
Dear Friends!
I would like to begin with the most important thing. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has made a historical decision to include two team events in the Olympic programme. In this way, we had ensured equal rights for all fencers to participate in the Olympic games. It is not only just another phase in the development of fencing, it is a significant step into the future, a real breakthrough. The biggest and most difficult task is solved, our goal is achieved. But now we shall seriously think about how we want to see the future of fencing and accurately determine our priorities and activities.
Time to Tokyo runs very fast. The IOC’s confidence is not only a great honor for us, but also an enormous responsibility. Our goal is to demonstrate at the Olympic Games in Tokyo that fencing is one of the most modern, high-tech and popular sports.
For this purpose, we all have to go through the challenging way.
The Olympic Games are the competitions of the bests. We need to make sure that fencing continues to develop rapidly all over the continents. Our Federation will continue its targeted programs of assistance to national federations. We will help young people, newly joined, as well as all those federations, that need our support.
I am confident that our efforts will be rewarded.
We are creating new Academies for coaches. We already have an Academy of Coaches in the European Continent, and recently the Executive Committee of our Federation decided to open two Academies for Coaches in the African Continent. Let's see how they will function, and what the results will be. We need to ensure the training of our own qualified staff in each Continent, who can develop fencing in the areas.
We are actively working on upgrading the level of our competitions. For this we must attract more media, this is highly important for us. We have a very good TV broadcast rating of World Championships. But besides the World Championships, we have many other large scale competitions. It is necessary to make their level worthy for the media to have desire to broadcast them.
Fencing should be interesting to a wide audience, and not just only interesting, but also understandable. For this we need to open our sport for young people. We must work on modernization of our sport, attracting new technologies and testing the innovations. Our Federation is doing a great job promoting fencing in social networks. In this regard certain results have already been achieved: we have a good numbers for the development of social networks on YouTube, Facebook, Tweeter, Instagram.
We are preparing for the opening of a new ultramodern website. Its launching is planned on the next year for the anniversary of our Federation. You all know that on the next year our Federation will celebrate the 105th anniversary. This is another important stage.
As you can see, we have a very good basis for showing new fencing to the world at the Olympic Games in Tokyo.
I wish you all the fruitful work and wise decisions!
FIE President A.B. Usmanov’s Speech at the 96th FIE Congress