All was going really well until........

All was going really well at the WCF Annual Assembly today and at 1220 we had reached the end of the elections and were looking forward to the last couple of agenda items. An hour later we were still there!!!!

But more of that later!!

And first of all let's go back to last night and the Swiss Curling Association's reception when Kate Caithness, WCF President, received a couple of gifts from the SCA - the first was, unsurprisingly, a cow bell and the second was a bar of Toblerone - except this bar weighed 4.5 KILOS!!

So this morning's first task was to give the Toblerone to Bruno Schallenberg chair of the organising committee together with a hammer so that he could smash the bar down into smaller pieces for the delegates to share at the coffee break.

Onto the main business, and with the following countries being represented, there were 48 representatives present from 29 countries carrying 77 votes and a further 16 proxies being carried representing 22 votes - a total of 99 votes available. Plus representatives of 2 provisional members were present.

Scotland, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Netherland, New Zealand, Norway, Russsia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, USA who are all full members and Luxembourg and Chinese Taipei who are provisional members.

Proxies were being carried for representatives of Austria, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Ireland, Wales, Japan, Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, Slovenia, Sweden, Turkey, USA.

The main news about next season's competitions that had not been announced before was that the World Seniors and World Mixed Doubles would both be held in Canada in 2013 between the 13th and 20th April. No venue as yet as contract still being negotiated.

When it came to the Board elections Kate Caithness was unopposed as President, Andy Anderson was unopposed as Finance Director and Bent Ramsfjell of Norway was elected Vice President in a straight fight between him and Celal Cuneyt Isgor of Turkey.

The current WCF Constitution gives automatic places on the Board to Scotland, Canada and the USA and also has a requirement for there to be one "missing gender" - i.e as most of the time the candidates are male, the "missing gender" is female. Kate Caithness fulfilled the Scotland and "missing gender" roles while Andy Anderson is from the USA. There were 5 nominations for Members - at - Large, but ,as one of these was Graham Prouse of Canada, he was automatically elected to the Board. The other 4 nominations had to be reduced to 3 and unusually for the WCF elections each position was filled at the first ballot as follows: Leif Ohman (Sweden), Young C. Kim (Korea) and Toyokazu Ogawa (Japan).The unfortunate unsuccessful nominee was Niels Larsen of Denmark. For the first time there will be 2 Asians on the WCF Board and none from Central Europe following the resignation of Patrick Hurlimnann of Switzerland.

So there we were at 1220 with just the acceptrance of new Member Associations to be carried out - Mongolia were unanimously accepted but then, in a surprise to most of the delegates, the application of the Kosovo Curling Federation was announced. We were also told that a letter of protest had been received from Serbia and after the presentation from Kosovo, the representative of Serbia, Dara Gravara-Stojaovic made a passioned plea that Kosovo should not be admitted as this was contrary to UN, IOC and evenWCF constitutions!! 

Graham Prouse had been asked to check through various documents and had concluded that nothing in the WCF Constitution precluded Kosovo's acceptance. However a motion, proposed by Canada and seconded by Scotland, to put the application on the table at the WCF Congress in October was passed as an amendment to the motion from Germany and seconded by France that Kosovo should be accepted!! Whatever the ins and outs of the political situation this is a disappointing situation which, as Kate Caithness passionately indicated in her final remarks, goes against the whole 'Spirit of Curling'. We shall see what transpires at Turnberry in October.

After the meeting  it was off to the arena to see a disappointing play-off when the Kiwi dream finally died at the end of a 2-10 defeat by Sweden. 

This is my last blog from Basel as I return tomorrow in order to spend time at home before I go off to the World Seniors in Taarnby where I will be continuing with the daily blogs. 

Finally the first of my pictures from here which I have managed to access for this blog.They do say that some people come to worship their idols at the World Championships and here is the proof !!!